


The Demiurge

by The_Carnivorous_Muffin



Series: Lily and the Art of Being Sisyphus [47]
Category: Fate/Zero, Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Attempted Murder, Existentialism, F/M, Female Harry Potter, Friendship/Love, Humor, M/M, Master of Death Harry Potter, Murder, Redemption, Violence, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-23
Updated: 2018-08-22
Packaged: 2019-07-01 08:16:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 8
Words: 56,349
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15770160
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Carnivorous_Muffin/pseuds/The_Carnivorous_Muffin
Summary: The year is 1996 and in a strange, incomprehensible, action on the part of the grail itself Eleanor Lily Potter is summoned as a servant in the grail war





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Obligatory note that this is NOT CANON.

England, 1996

 

* * *

 

“Fifteen years,” pale blue eyes stared out the blinds, out onto the English countryside and towards the church and cemetery of Little Hangleton where the remains of Wizard Lenin’s massacred family were buried, “It has been fifteen years since that night I nearly destroyed myself.”

 

Sixteen years since Lily had been alive, four since Wizard Lenin had finally managed to regain a body for himself with Lily’s assistance, and she wondered when finally, that date would come when they would count years since the victory of Wizard Lenin’s bloody revolution.

 

The war, as it was, was nearly over, Dumbledore on his death bed, the Order of the Phoenix with members few and far between, and the ministry filled with nothing but bureaucrats and cowards…

 

The resistance now relied upon Neville Longbottom and a handful of eager eyed school children.

 

The end, with Lily half dangling on the couch in Wizard Lenin’s study and Wizard Lenin musing as he stared out the window in this final place he could take silent refuge from his sycophants, was more than in sight.

 

Golden sunlight, peeking through the blinds, streamed through his dark hair, and even staring at his back as he looked out and away from her, Lily couldn’t help but think he had the bearing of a king to him.

 

So that even by standing still, the sunflowers that were his knowing and unknowing subjects, turned their heads towards him.

 

“I had once thought I might be doing something quite different this year,” finally he turned from the window, crossed his arms and eyed her speculatively, “Did you know that the fourth grail war will beginning soon in Fuyuki, Lily?”

 

Kicking pale feet back and forth, she sighed, and decided to get straight to the question he was no doubt expecting from her, “The hell is a grail war?”

 

Lily had never heard of anything like that, and while she didn’t usually pay attention to wizards, if something generally important like that came up then usually she’d have some reference of familiarity to it.

 

But Wizard Lenin enjoyed his rhetorical questions on obscure topics even most wizards would scratch their heads at. More, when you got to the heart of it, he was also something of a radical when it came to magical theory, or at least, compared to what someone like Hermione Granger or Snape might spout. And he liked pointing out his very strange opinions to anyone who would listen which mostly ended up being Lily.

 

Because damn if Bellatrix LeStrange wasn’t the worst person in the world to talk to.

 

“It is a battle to the death, among seven alchemists, necromancers, rune masters, and masters of transfiguration, mages if you want to lump them all together, with the use of heroic spirits as servants for an omnipotent wish granting device, the grail,” he held up a hand before she could even ask, “And before you ask, no, it’s not the holy grail, that’s simply what it’s called.”

 

A battle to the death among seven mages… Well, that sounded… Actually, a lot like wizards if she thought about it. She herself had two years before participated in a miniature version of this complete with dragons, people drowning at the bottom of lakes, and resurrection rituals in creepy graveyards.

 

She really should just stop questioning all these strange past times they seemed to have. Although, she had to say, wizard gladiator tournaments did sound more interesting and less time consuming than your average quidditch match.

 

However, there was one odd phrasing she was stuck on, “An omnipotent wish granting device?”

 

“Supposedly,” Wizard Lenin said, “Three great pureblood families summoned it together two centuries ago, however, none has managed to claim it in the three wars since. Regardless, it has shown itself to be an object of incredible power. Capable of summoning and binding the dead and forming magical contracts between the living and their servant.”

 

He then sighed and shook his head with his typical wry and rather derisive smile, “Fortunately or unfortunately, the grail will only manifest at certain times and under certain conditions, and there are many rules that have arisen among the wizards who participate. I was too young when the last occurred, sixty years ago, that being before my eleventh birthday even. However, had I still been bodiless, or else still searching for immortality, then I would have sought out a means to summon one of the seven classes of spirit and enter the fray.”

 

“So, it’s a god then,” Lily stated, straightening herself on the couch to get a better look at him.

 

“Of a kind,” he seemed… Strangely unenthused by the idea, granted Wizard Lenin didn’t have the same weakness for mystical knick-knacks that Wizard Trotsky or even Hindenburg did, but all the same, for that kind of a tool to just be passed over…

 

It was unlike him.

 

“Are we going to Japan then?” Lily asked and received a rather irritated glare in response.

 

“Of course not,” Wizard Lenin practically spat out, eyebrows lowered, sounding more like Wizard Lenin than he ever did at any of his meetings with his cultists, “The grail is a quest for fools or else the hopelessly desperate, of which I am neither. The Matous, Tosakas, and Einzburns have bred themselves and trained for centuries for the sole purpose of obtaining the grail, not to mention the other deep pureblood families of the world with their eyes on it. Even for me it wouldn’t be easy to slaughter the competition… Which, it is, by the way, a slaughter, every single time it manifests. More than that though, they forget themselves, power like that always comes with a steep price, it is the nature of such things…”

 

Then he walked over to her with a somewhat fond if exasperated smile and placed a pale hand on her head, fingers ruffling through red curls, “Besides, I already have my omnipotent wish granting device.”

 

He went on then to sigh, slump in his desk, and ask her for her thoughts on this whole England business and even what she thought they should get up to afterwards, when Dumbledore finally did kick the bucket and resistance was proven to be futile as all opposition was assimilated into the Borg.

 

And Fuyuki, a city Lily had never even heard of before Wizard Lenin bothered to bring it up, on the complete other side of the world, wracked by wizarding war upon wizarding war, lay forgotten.

 

Of course, Lily should have known that would be somehow too convenient and that, like Murphey’s law dictated, when something could happen to her, it somehow did.

 

 

* * *

 

“Were you expecting someone else?”

 

Kirei Kotomine stared down at the girl, the heroic spirit, Assassin, summoned by a relic for participation in the fourth grail war, and for the first time in three years found himself…

 

At a complete and utter loss.

 

The command seals were now tattooed in red upon his hand, a clear mark of the grail’s approval (although, to what end, what someone like him could want from the grail remained an utter mystery), but where he had expected a horde of shadowy figures with a skull’s mask for a face there was instead a young teenage girl who couldn’t be more than seventeen, bright red hair seeming to glow even in the half light of Kirei’s borrowed laboratory, limbs thin and lithe, skin pale as if it were painted, dressed in a school girl’s uniform complete with dark knee length socks and a plain gray skirt, a large silver sword with red jewels upon the hilt, clearly designed for a much taller man, strapped across her back, and eyes an eerie intense green that seemed to cut through to the very heart of him.

 

The pact had been made, she had accepted him as her master, and yet…

 

And yet, he had no idea who she was, or why he himself had been chosen.

 

“Assassin,” he started, and her eyebrows raised, she leaned forward as if to inspect him.

 

“Assassin?” she parroted before leaning back, grimacing, “Well, when you put it like that I suppose I am most famous for assassinating a dark lord… I mean, in most circles. This grail thing though… I have to say, after being wrenched from England and dragged here to be your familiar or whatever, and then having information dumped conveniently into my brain, I’m a bit fuzzy on the details.”

 

“I was told the grail would supply you with sufficient knowledge,” he stated, at least, Tosaka had assured him of as much. The girl nodded and offered him a small and casual shrug, and she was, so casual and unrefined for a noble spirit of an ancient warrior.

 

There was something almost insultingly modern to her, as if she had taken modernity and coated herself in it, but only just barely so that the wild, fey, dangerous side of her was still quite visible beneath this.

 

“Oh, yes, it gave uh… quite the rundown. However, you having summoned me here, I assume you have some idea of what an ‘omnipotent wish granting device’ even is, especially since you seem to want it badly enough to enter the wizarding equivalent of a WWE tournament for it.”

 

“I have no desire for the grail,” Kirei offered her blandly, “I am here merely as a support to another master, Tosaka.”

 

For a moment, the girl merely stared at him, as if dumbfounded by his response, and finally remarked, “That’s a strange amount of effort to put in for something you’re supposedly not interested in.”

 

The girl stepped out of her summoning circle and next to him, looking him directly in the eyes, and why was it… Why was it that he felt, in that moment, that she could see him somehow better than he could see himself? That she could see past the emptiness and overwhelming apathy within his soul to…

 

But there was no feeling in him, there never had been, not for some time now.

 

“Didn’t really answer my question though,” she remarked, “I asked what you believe the grail is, not if you yourself wanted it.”

 

“It is an omnipotent wish granting device…”

 

“Yes, yes, I heard all of that,” the girl interrupted, holding up a pale hand to his face and utterly dismissing his words, “But what is that? You’re a priest, do you think it’s God?”

 

Her words were certainly blasphemous, but then, no more than Tosaka’s often were. Indeed, looking at her, her eyes on the black he wore and the golden cross about his neck, she expected a reaction out of him. Perhaps, she even anticipated it.

 

He found himself frowning, staring at her, assessing her… “You accepted me as your master,”

 

“I accepted you as a temporary source of magic for me in this physical plane of Fuyuki Japan for a period of two weeks while I perform whatever shenanigans you need done to get you closer to this grail,” the girl said rather dismissively, “Master is a strong word for that agreement.”

 

“And you yourself do not want the grail?”

 

“I don’t know what it is,” the girl scoffed, shoving her hands into her pockets, “Just that it was pulled into this dimension from somewhere else and, having experience with that sort of thing myself… Well, let’s just say, that’s risky business.”

 

She then sighed, “I really should write a letter back to Lenin, he won’t be pleased to know I’ve been kidnapped by a magical cup… This thing does only last about two weeks, right?”

 

He blinked, blinked again, tried to… He knew her, he knew her from somewhere, he was certain of it. He had come across that face somewhere in some paper that was far too recent, “I did not have your relic. You are not Hassan-i Sabbah.”

 

“…The universe isn’t always consistent,” the girl dismissed with a wave of her pale hand, as if circumventing the will of the grail was mere child’s play or an unremarkable coincidence at best, “Your grail is proof enough of that.”

 

“How could I have summoned you when I have no idea who you are?”

 

That stopped her, she turned, looked at him puzzled then suddenly amused, “You don’t? What a strange world, I don’t think I’ve ever been not recognized by someone in the know… Maybe I’m only famous in England.”

 

She held out a hand to his, gripped his in hers, eying the red command seal on his skin, “Eleanor Lily Potter, but anyone of real import just calls me Lily. And you?”

 

“Kirei Kotomine,” he said then, with a jerk, removed his hand from hers. He was not here to humor heathen servants.

 

He stepped away, began to walk up the stairs, the girl raising her eyebrows as she looked up after him before following up, watching with raised eyebrows as he explained the strange developments to a disbelieving Tosaka, dismissing the girl from material form yet feeling, even as she instantly (jarringly) disappeared from view, that her green eyes were still watching and judging him.

 

As if hers were the true eyes of God upon him.

 

* * *

 

 

There was something about Kirei Kotomine…

 

When you looked into his eyes there was nothing in him, a dull flatness, no spark of soul or divine inspiration. Or at least, none that Lily could see, he was an empty husk of a human being.

 

The funny thing was that no one except the priest turned wizard himself seemed to realize it.

 

Lily wasn’t really appreciating being kidnapped by a giant cup, again, but that said when she’d heard his proposition through the ever-present glitches in the universe and the call of an omnipotent wish granting device… Well, how could Lily say no to that?

 

(That, and, it hadn’t really seemed like something she had the power to say no to.)

 

Even if Kirei and his master Tosaka didn’t seem to appreciate her presence either. The wizard, at least, had seemed to recognize Lily for exactly who she was and had spent about five minutes having a complete panic attack and muttering something about the grail choosing this or that and how this wasn’t supposed to have happened.

 

Then he’d seemed inordinately thrilled.

 

And then he’d kicked Lily out of their secret meeting and she was left twiddling her thumbs in the basement wondering if this was really going to take only two weeks and if she was really comfortable with the idea that this priest now wielded infinite power through her own abilities should he be inclined to use those handy dandy command seals.

 

Not that he or his master appeared to know or appreciate the extent of Lily’s abilities.

 

Which, perhaps, was for the best.

 

Now she and Kirei stood on a hill, overlooking the Tosaka estate and its rather impressive rune work (not quite enough to rival Flamel’s but pretty damn snazzy all the same), the last master caster having finally been summoned and the war on the eve of its starting.

 

And once again, as he stared out at this mansion, there was nothing in him at all.

 

Lily sniffed, wiped her nose against her sleeve, ignoring the feeling of the sword of Gryffindor against her back (and honestly, why the sword of all things, she wasn’t even good at using it and never had been), and remarked, “It’s cold out tonight.”

 

The man made no move to even acknowledge her, did not even look at her, instead continued to stare down the hill. And they were almost… Well, no, they weren’t like Wizard Lenin’s eyes, they lacked his passion and will and drive although there was a hint of his ruthlessness inside of them. Neither were they like Wizard Trotsky’s, they lacked the erratic and desperate madness and grasping at life that always existed in his pale blue gaze.

 

Hindenburg, yes, Quirrell at the very end, the way he’d looked at her when the stone was in her grasp and not in his. There had been smugness in him, arrogance and distant amusement, but that eerie flatness…

 

It wasn’t unfamiliar.

 

 “Assassin,” not even a twitch from him, not even a glance, forever looking towards the jewels and the wards surrounding the mansion, mind constantly turning in on itself.

 

“Lily,” Lily corrected, but he didn’t seem inclined to listen, he hadn’t, as far as Lily knew he hadn’t even called her Eleanor Potter yet.

 

“Assassin,” he repeated, “You are to enter the Tosaka compound below and kill Tokiomi Tosaka.”

 

Lily blinked, looked down at the compound, then blinked again, “Holy shit,” she then whipped her head back towards him, “Isn’t this a little early for backstabbing on this kind of a level?”

 

This time he did look at her, with that empty blank expression and those dead brown eyes, a slight frown on his face, “Are you questioning me?”

 

“Well… Yes, yes I am!” Lily said before pointing, “This thing hasn’t even started yet and you’re already driving a knife into his back. I mean, I’d say I’m impressed but… damn, you are very fast.”

 

Lily wasn’t even sure Wizard Lenin and all his derivative brothers were this heavily steeped in chronic backstabbing disorder.

 

“Is this not your specialty, Assassin?”

 

“Well…” Lily hesitated, grimaced, and thought back to all that she had ever truly been great at. Death, it was in her name, it was her past her present and her future, and ultimately she would always be a destroyer of worlds, “Yes, I suppose it is. All the same… Isn’t he like, super wizard or something?”

 

“Surely, his traps are something you can dismantle,” the priest offered.

 

“Well, yes, but… Doesn’t he have his own servant, the archer?” Lily asked, although she wasn’t really so concerned about that, she just… Lily had learned, over the years, that it was best not to walk into situations that screamed trap at you.

 

Even if you were immortal there were sometimes… consequences.

 

“Archer won’t be an issue,” and was it her imagination or was there a slight quirk to his lips, the barest ghost of an amused smile.

 

“Right,” Lily lamely agreed, well, far be it for Lily to argue with a man about to impersonate Brutus, “Well then…”

 

Lily closed her eyes and sat down upon the grass, concentrating and seeking out the aura of Tokiomi Tosaka, who, unfortunately for him, had become rather familiar in the past couple weeks Lily had been loitering around his mansion. Granted, he wasn’t exactly… likeable.

 

He wasn’t dislikeable either but… Well, he was a wizard and it showed. He was the kind of man who believed himself to be more honorable and cleverer than he really was, the kind who, had he come face to face with Wizard Lenin, would have either been taken for a pawn or else slaughtered.

 

Apparently though, he didn’t even need Wizard Lenin to do the job, not with the apprentice backstabbing priest to do it for him in so little time.

 

Lily really had nothing to do with this, and he knew the stakes, they all did, he’d even sent his daughter and wife away. So really, he had to have known this was coming, though perhaps not so…

 

“What are you doing?!”

 

Lily opened her eyes, looked up to see an almost alarmed Kirei staring down at her, which was really more expression than she’d ever seen on his face before. Lily, disgruntled, and losing her concentration responded back curtly, “Doing what you told me to do, killing Tosaka.”

 

“From this distance?!”

 

“Yes?” Lily responded, eyes glancing down towards the mansion then back to him, “You think I’m going down there? No, no, this is much easier and less likely for me to end up arrowed to death.”

 

Having been stabbed to death, concussed to death, and pretty much everything in between Lily wasn’t looking to add emulating Saint Sebastian onto her list.

 

“You are going down there!” he commanded, calloused fingers pointing towards the mansion.

 

“…Why?” Lily asked, feeling that somewhere along the lines, they had gotten their wires crossed. Although how Lily could have possibly, supposedly, misinterpreted the order of ‘kill that asshole who feeds me and teaches me magical nonsense’ was beyond her.

 

“To eliminate Tosaka!”

 

“Hold up, I’m confused,” Lily said holding up a hand, “Is the point eliminating Tosaka or breaking and entering? Because if it’s the first one then I am staying as far away from that house as I want to.”

 

For a moment, there was almost an expression of disbelief on his face, but then, then it faded again and a cold husk of contempt took its place, “Are they not the same thing?”

 

“No, they are absolutely not the same thing,” Lily scoffed, “I’d actually prefer to do the second, if that’s really what you’re after… He has a daughter you know,”

 

“I am aware of his daughter,” Kirei responded, perhaps a bit too swiftly, but not quite offended enough to say that he had been insulted rather… It was almost an automatic response he was expected to give in this situation but one that had no real intent behind it.

 

Lily continued anyways, eyeing him from the side, trying to get a hold on this man and exactly what he wanted, “Her name’s Rin, I like her, not sure if she likes me or not (we didn’t really get a chance to talk what with her and the mother fleeing the city)… She thinks you’re an asshole, which, given that you’ve just ordered me to shank her father within minutes of this thing really starting I can’t say I blame her.”

 

“It is not your place to question my motivations,” he was so… dull when he said it, or rather, like he was dampening down his own feelings and had been doing so for so long that he himself almost mistook it for apathy.

 

But it wasn’t, not really, at the heart of things Lily thought he was anything but apathetic.

 

He sighed, and whatever tension was in him appeared to release itself, and he stated, “I will make this clear, you will enter the mansion, you will navigate past his defenses, and you will make an attempt on Tosaka’s life.”

 

“Alright, alright, fine, we’ll do it your ridiculous way…” Lily sighed, somehow certain that doing it the priest’s way would ultimately be worse for Lily, though she couldn’t really say why. Just that her girl who lived senses were tingling.

 

“Just don’t blame me when it goes to hell,” Lily spat back, but there it was, the apathy.

 

Stuffing her hands into her pockets she teleported to the edge of the estate, frowning to herself, at the very least it was only two weeks out of her life. That was hardly anything at all, Wizard Lenin was gone much longer than that all the time…

 

She hadn’t gotten a chance to call or write him, actually, that might be a problem.

 

“Alright, wards, dismantling wards…” she stared at them and they were… more intricate up close, tied to a series of jewels throughout the yard. Honestly, way too intricate to bother messing with.

 

Concentrating, exerting her own indomitable will forward, reaching out for the eager strings of the universe Lily cut the strings holding the barrier apart and watched as they fell limply, shattered deflated and invisible bubbles, to the earth.

 

She waited for a second, then another, expecting… Well, something certainly, and when the sign seemed clear enough she hopped over the gate and onto the lawn itself, where she was instantly met by a barrage of flying swords.

 

“Holy shit!” she backed up, looked up to the roof and found herself staring at a golden man, who was in turn standing before a golden rift in both time and space (and that… that was more powerful than any wizard could manage, more than any wizard she had ever seen, even Lily didn’t play so casually with space and time, or at least, not on a daily basis…)

 

“Little worm crawling on the ground,” a calm clear and utterly derisive voice called down to her, “Who gave you permission to look up?”

 

Stepping backwards Lily summoned a shield around herself just in time for another barrage of swords to storm down upon her from the golden extradimensional portal.

 

“You are not worthy to gaze upon me,” the man continued, making no move to move from his position, “Yet you dare to use parlor tricks against my vast treasury when you should be staring at the ground until you die?”

 

“Well,” Lily called up to him, spreading her legs and letting her will spread into her fingertips, “I’m afraid that might take a while, you see, I’m not so easy to exterminate.”

 

“All mongrels are pitifully easy to exterminate,” the man replied, and it was hard to tell in the light, the darkness on the ground and the golden glow surrounding him like the noonday sun, but she thought she saw a smirk on his face, “It is in your nature.”

 

Cue another barrage of swords, this time several of them piercing through Lily’s shield somehow and forcing Lily to teleport out of their range. Then, before he could land another blow from that kind of a distance, she teleported onto the roof itself.

 

And he was… He was like the sun, all red and gold in a single being, his skin fair but his hair practically glowing even in the dark, and his eyes… His eyes slit and the red of stoplights.

 

“You dare stand so close to my presence?!”

 

“Yes, well, it seemed like a good idea at the time,” Lily offered with an almost sheepish smile, “You must be Archer, then.”

 

She ducked out of the way of a sword, flying down from above her and hitting where her neck had been only seconds before.

 

“I have no desire to speak to vermin,” the man said.

 

“And I have no desire to be stabbed but we can’t always get what we want,” Lily spat back, barely dodging yet another sword even as she strengthened the shield around herself.

 

“I am the king of kings, I do not have to want, because anything worthy of my treasure horde is already in my possession,” he sneered even as he looked down from her, not that he was all that much taller than Lily but apparently, he was tall enough, “To covet, to desire, that is for lowlier beings than I.”  


“That’s nice,” Lily offered, teleporting to his other side before a thought struck her, “Wait, so then you don’t want the grail?”

 

“You misunderstand, worm, the grail is already mine. If it is a treasure worthy of my attention then it already belongs to me, any who attempts to take it is nothing but a lowly thief.” He sneered as he turned again to face her, “I find your trick tiresome.”

 

“Well that makes… no sense,” Lily said before holding up her hands in defense, “Which is fine, the universe doesn’t really go out of its way to make sense on a regular basis anyway.”

 

And that was about when he must have started getting truly annoyed, because the next weapon was quite a bit larger than the others, and tore itself through Tosaka’s roof, leaving Lily to just barely teleport out of its way, and then out of its way again as it crashed down where she stood.

 

“Look,” Lily said holding up her hands, “If you don’t mind, then I’m kind of busy…”

 

Apparently, he minded, he minded quite a bit, to the point that Lily felt that the collateral damage was becoming somewhat ridiculous. At this rate he was going to crush Tosaka before she even got a chance to try. If she was going to kill Tosaka then… Well, there was a thought that deserved attention, what was she doing this for?

 

A pact?

 

A promise to a man who might as well be a homunculus for all the human feeling inside of him?

 

And it hadn’t even really been a promise, he’d just sort of said go do it, not even bothering with a command seal and then Lily was off to be arrowed (or, well, sworded) to death by someone who was wearing about as much gold as what was in her Gringotts vault.

 

“Enough!” Lily cried out, and with a great wave of her own power sealed herself and the golden king of kings, whoever that might be, off from time and this dimension as well as whatever golden dimension he pulled endless swords from.

 

“You… You dare…” but for once the man didn’t seem angered so much as stunned, hopelessly stunned as he stared at her as if seeing her for the first time.

 

“Look, you work for Tosaka and I work for that bastard priest Kotomine, but that’s not important, I think we both understand that this servant thing is bullshit,” Lily started, holding up her hand, “Now, I don’t know about you, but I don’t appreciate any of this, at all.”

 

For a moment he stared, the air around them in this world that was not a world at all seemed to almost splinter, cracks of golden light spilling through but then… Then it held, the light faded, and only Lily and the king of kings remained.

 

And it was as if some dam had broken between them, a fire seemed to go out of her opponent though his arms remained crossed and his eyes critical, “It seems, mongrel, that I was wrong, you do possess some power after all.”

 

He sighed then, appearing almost put upon, eyeing the grayed-out world of the dimension that was not quite the one they were used to, “As for my master, he is deferent enough, but he is proving to be duller than I expected and provides very little entertainment.”

 

Seeing his more relaxed posture Lily herself relaxed her stance and decided it was a good time to vent her own frustrations.

 

“Here I am, going about my life, then all the sudden, wham, I’m kidnapped by a magical cup to participate in this territorial wizarding pissing match which could end in the world’s complete annihilation,” Lily said, gesturing wildly as she spoke, trying not to feel too intimidated by the way the man’s eyes now lingered on her, as if trying to decide what kind of a mongrel she truly was, “Now, this is the second time I’ve been forced into magical contract shenanigans by an ancient cup. Isn’t once enough for anyone’s lifetime?”

 

Then remembering the fact that they were comparing masters, Lily continued, “More, at least your guy has expressions, I’m pretty sure Kirei sold his soul for his wet blanket of a personality.”

 

The man let out a harsh, amused, laugh, his golden army clanking against him, “You, girl, are more amusing than I had previously thought. I believe I shall allow you to live tonight. However, I disagree, I find your Kirei Kotomine to be a diamond in the rough.”

 

“He just sent me into this cluster fuck,” Lily said, motioning around them, to that other world where Tosaka’s roof had caved in on itself.

 

“A man who claims he has no wish of his own, no desire, merely follows the orders and schemes of my own master. Tell me, girl, do you not think such a man has his own hidden, entertaining, depths?”

 

“Well,” Lily said, considering, blowing out, “He hasn’t shown them yet, I can tell you that.”

 

They stood there silently for a moment, considering Lily’s wet blanket of a master, who had just sent her to what he probably had thought was her death…

 

Had that been his goal in all of this, not to kill Tosaka, but instead to dispose himself of Eleanor Lily Potter? But to what end, when he had expended so much effort in obtaining her…

 

“So,” Lily said breaking the strangely cold and contemplative silence, “We both agree this is unbelievably stupid, just to be clear.”  


The man said nothing but he didn’t disagree either which was rather telling. Looking at him out of the corner of her eye, in all his golden splendor, she wondered if he wasn’t a bit like her. A man who could rip apart the fabric of space and time with little more than a whim. Overpowered by half, unchallenged, trying in his own way to make some meaning out of the mortal coil even while the petty expectations of the world were dumped upon his indifferent shoulders…

 

(However, he didn’t seem the type to have had greatness thrust upon him, he himself was the incomprehensible and terrible greatness.)

 

Still, she found herself smiling at him, and thinking, against all logic, that perhaps she was looking at a potential friend in the unlikeliest of circumstances. She stuck out her hand towards him, “It’s Lily, by the way,”

 

“You are a presumptuous girl,” the man sniffed, not even looking at her hand, “And a lowly one, if even you, a noble heroic spirit, have no title to accompany your legend.”

 

“Oh, there are they’re just… ridiculous,” Lily grimaced, “Let’s see there’s girl who lived, that’s a common one… Destroyer of worlds works too.”

 

“Destroyer of worlds?” he asked before ushering out another harsh laugh, “What a strange and presumptuous title to earn for yourself, girl. How can you destroy the world when so much of it belongs to me?”

 

Well, Lily wasn’t about to get into all of that, “What about you?”

 

“I am the king of kings and king of heroes, all noble spirits and legends are derived from me, including your own no doubt,” he scoffed and then seeing her raised eyebrows added in an almost disbelieving and derisive manner, “I am none other than Gilgamesh of Babylon and Uruk.”

 

“Gilgamesh, really?” Lily asked, granted she had never gotten too in depth with the Epic of Gilgamesh but all the same she could appreciate the name when she heard it, “Well, it’s an honor to meet you.”

 

“Of course, it is an honor to meet me,” the man offered, with a resigned and tried patience, “Now, I have had enough of this discourse, you have entertained me and so you shall live but you will restore us to our world and me to the Gate of Babylon.”

 

“Right,” Lily said nodding, “Well, that will leave us right back where we started, won’t it? And then they won’t learn anything at all from all of this…”

 

“Learn?” he laughed again, “You expect them to learn from this?”

 

“One can hope,” Lily said before admitting, “Although I’ll admit it’s a faint one that I can’t quite bring myself to believe in.”

 

Although it had a sort of pointlessness to it if none of them learned anything from all of this, but all the same she couldn’t… She couldn’t really picture them all faring well at the end of this, whatever seven wizards had been pulled into this mess.

 

Gilgamesh, king of kings, broke the silence, “You are more powerful than I had expected, more that sword, which surely is in my treasury, is not your noble phantasm.”

 

“My what?” Lily asked but he barely seemed to be paying attention to her.

 

Instead, he mused as he stared at her, “Perhaps, girl, with your power that can even begin to rival my own, you yourself belong inside of my collection.”

 

And Lily was officially too weirded out to deal, she offered him a sheepish grin, took a step back and said with a small wave, “Right, well… It’s been fun but I have go now.”

 

And with that she moved them back to where they had been standing before, reasserted time and space to its original positions, with her standing on a split beam while he stood across from her, the golden gates opened behind him still even as he stared at her.

 

And, to the sound of his laughter, face flushing, she teleported back to whence she came next to a stunned Kirei Kotomine, “Right, well, Kotomine, Gilgamesh and I had a talk and we decided that wrecking his house was close enough to killing him… And that this is all very stupid and you people are boring mongrels.”

 

* * *

 

 

Gilgamesh was beginning to grow tired of this affair, he had not imagined, well, he was not entirely certain what he had imagined when he’d heard Tosaka’s call from the void of eternity. Nothing like his own legend, certainly, Enkidu was millennia dead and buried and the world had never been quite the same without him.

 

But there had been a certain assumption, given by Tosaka’s recognition of Gilgamesh’s position and stature as well as his own unworthiness (such clear-eyed recognition was a rarity for most mongrels), and there was this promise of brief amusement on the material plane where the grail tantalized potential thieves with its promise of an omnipotent wish.

 

And perhaps, in that moment he had consented to Tokiomi Tosaka being his vassal, there had been a touch of curiosity, to see what cheap imitations of himself the world had produced in his absence.

 

However, since his summoning he had been rarely utilized, only officially sent out against Assassin in a battle that, while interesting in its own right and worthy of reflection, was little more than a cheap charade on the part of Tosaka as he attempted to be clever.

 

Tosaka, despite or perhaps even because of his respect for his lord and king Gilgamesh, was proving to be quite the dullard.

 

As for the other heroic spirits and their own masters, from what Gilgamesh had glimpsed of them (shirking Tosaka’s orders to the point where that mongrel had dared, dared, to use a command seal to force Gilgamesh’s will) they proved disappointing and more than that insulting.

 

Lancer was a mongrel of no particular import, a romantic chivalric soldier who frankly wasn’t even worth Gilgamesh’s attention. His master an arrogant mage who if possible seemed duller than Tosaka.

 

Caster had yet to make an appearance, or his master for that matter, but Gilgamesh held little hope for their entertainment value.

 

Berserker nothing more than a mad dog tearing at his leash, his master, an unseen mongrel likely cowering away somewhere in the shadows.

 

And then the other two.

 

Rider, an oversized mongrel brazenly naming himself Iksander the king of conquerors, so freely and with such pride in Gilgamesh’s golden presence. There were mongrels in the world, and Gilgamesh tolerated them as he might tolerate ants beneath his boot, but the undeserved ignorant arrogance of a mongrel who dared declare himself king… Well, it was little better than a thief. His master though, a strangely attractive mage with pale blue eyes and a fire for a soul, looking rather frustrated at his servant’s antics even while he drank wine in the chariot, perhaps held a spark of promise for entertainment, mongrel though he too likely was.

 

Then, finally, the little girl with the hidden sword, king of knights she called herself, looking up at him with such fierce pride and determination in those large green eyes. Such pride, passion, and arrogance within her even as she, with chivalry as always, stood guard of the pale haired woman with the red eyes.

 

If she wasn’t so garishly insulting to Gilgamesh’s very existence, then perhaps, she could have been of some entertainment.

 

But as it was Gilgamesh had spent these past few days on the physical plane loitering, drinking through Tosaka’s bland wares and waiting in this tedium for the call to action, a call that didn’t seem to be coming anytime soon.

 

And it was beginning to grate on him.

 

Perhaps, the only true boon to this situation, where Gilgamesh could come and go as he pleased within the manor as well as the church where Kotomine and Assassin had secluded themselves, was that it gave him ample time to satisfy his curiosity with the only two mongrels surrounding him who did provide him with a spark of entertainment.

 

The priest and apprentice, Kirei Kotomine, and his noble heroic servant Assassin, Eleanor Lily Potter, Destroyer of Worlds.

 

Kotomine was a man of self-imposed layers, a man who had twisted himself so thoroughly that his own desires, his own joyfulness, remained hidden even to himself. Gilgamesh would speak to him in his own time and at his own leisure, prod away at his defenses and see for himself what lay beneath this devout servant of Tosaka and the church.

 

Today it was the girl, little more than a child with the sword of a man strapped to her back, dressed still in her school uniform, desperately scribbling out a letter that he chose to observe.

 

Eleanor Lily Potter of England, or so Tosaka had described, savior of her country and destroyer of dark mages, a girl reviled and adored for her sheer inability to die at beings seemingly far more powerful than her.

 

A wild card and unexpected servant, one with unknown abilities, but given her reputation and growing legend, a legend not even yet finish, one which perhaps could be made use of.

 

They had expected Gilgamesh to put her down like a dog when she’d entered the Tosaka estate, and this was far from unnatural, as had she been anyone else just that would have occurred. Gilgamesh had underestimated her, he was not too proud to admit that he had assumed that she would have the toys or trinkets available to all such mongrels and had used his own paltry means to eliminate her. However, when she had opened her own unnamed gate to another world, closing the Gate of Babylon and painting reality into her own image where Gilgamesh’s stores of noble phantasms were out of reach, he acknowledged that she perhaps, was worthy of the might of Ea itself.

 

A part of him itched for that battle.

 

It was a pity that she was the one rival he would likely never face again, as Tosaka through Kotomine only tasked her with reconnaissance at this point to spy on the other masters and their servants, them believing she had perished in her battle with Gilgamesh.

 

Often though, both he and she were left to waste on the side lines, both caught in Tosaka’s petty schemes that he no doubt thought quite devious, and Gilgamesh was left to the wine and the tedium and the thought that this was not what he’d had in mind when he had agreed to Tosaka’s proposition.

 

She had hardly looked at him when he materialized, glass of putrid subpar modern red wine in hand, just a glance up with those green eyes (different, somehow, than Saber’s yet achingly similar all the same) and then back down at her paper, chewing on the end of her pen. There was an irritating lack of acknowledgement of his glory, but then, that seemed in her nature. She was disconnected from this plane of existence, despite herself being solid, materialized completely by her own mana and will, she seemed somehow further cut off than the other servants as if she peered through this world through thick and frosted glass.

 

And it wasn’t as if she did not see him for what he was, she did, and she acknowledged it, but at the same time she lacked the ability to act as a sycophant or even a proper vassal. Rather, when she looked at him, her eyes reflected the other worldly light that was his own divinity and she did not dare to flinch at the sight of him.

 

Strangely, and he wasn’t entirely sure why, perhaps it was because he too had acknowledged but never flinched, it reminded him of Enkidu.

 

She was innocent in her impudence, and she seemed both young and ancient in a single moment, a girl of hopeless contradictions, and for that he tolerated her more grating habits.

 

“Girl, what is that you’re writing so fervently?”

 

She glanced up, eyes taking a moment to focus on him, to take in his casual modern ware before breathing out with a sigh and holding up the cheap parchment she had been scribbling upon, “I’m trying to write to Lenin, he’s back in England, and explain that I’ve been kidnapped and or coerced into the grail war by the holy grail. I mean, he might have guessed, this is the kind of thing that seems to happen to me on a yearly basis, but on the other hand I figured it’d be best to tell him.”

 

He frowned at that slightly, irked for some reason he could not quite explain even to himself, “This Lenin you speak of, I assume is as common a mongrel as any. Surely, next to something such as yourself, he is petty and insignificant and unworthy of your attention.”

 

Perhaps it was that she reminded him… In some ways, of himself, not as powerful or glorious by any means, but Eleanor Lily Potter, Lily as she called herself, was no mongrel or pretender. And he imagined, in this modern era, she found herself positively surrounded by mongrels and pretenders as Gilgamesh himself had once been.

 

She let out a harsh amused laugh, “Lenin is anything but common, my friend.”

 

Friend, he blinked, what an innocently impudent thing to say to him, as she smiled across at him with that face that was still halfway between a child’s and a woman’s. When had a being last dared to claim Gilgamesh, king of kings, as their friend?

 

She, however, didn’t seem to realize the momentousness of what she had so casually said and in such good humor, as with passion burning in her eyes and wild hand gestures with pale hands she went on to describe this man Lenin.

 

“He’s a revolutionary, you’ve probably actually heard about him from Tosaka, goes by the name of Voldemort when it suits him, turning England on its head, crawling his way back from the grave itself… We’re irrevocably intertwined, Lenin and I, his doing not mine. You see, when I was a year old he tried to kill me and… Well, it backfired famously and magnificently and he ended up trapped inside of my mind for eleven years. Either way, he’s been there since almost the beginning, my oldest and… And perhaps one of my only friends.”

 

The dark mage, Gilgamesh had learned less of him, there had been no need and while the grail supplied him with knowledge of this modern world and how it operated specific details of a country he was not in were hazy at best.

 

However, he could imagine it, a young and terribly innocent god, with only the barest inkling of what it meant to be human or divine for that matter, and an overambitious, long suffering, mongrel as her own companion of any true worth.

 

“Friends,” he remarked, tasting the word on his tongue, its taste complimenting the bitter and sour wine, “No, Tosaka said nothing of you being friends with the rogue mage.”

 

She dismissed this with a wave of her hand, “Tosaka is a wizard, and even if he’s not an English wizard he’s still wizard enough, they only have ever seen the illusion that’s Eleanor Lily Potter, and not anything else.”

 

Then, without warning, she pushed the letter into his hands, “Now, thoughts?”

 

Thoughts, the thoughts of Gilgamesh were not simply asked for so casually, still offering her a contemptuous glare and sipping on Tosaka’s cheap wine, feeling ennui scratching at his very soul, Gilgamesh slowly read through her English script.

 

It was just as insultingly blunt and casual as the girl was in conversation, and if he wasn’t sure that Lenin was a mongrel, then he might very well pity the man. As it was, he could imagine well enough the look on this man’s face, having already seen such an expression on Tosaka’s when he’d realized how thoroughly Assassin had destroyed his ancestral manor.

 

And even in here, was her strangely casual acknowledgment of the king of kings, Gilgamesh, and their battle.

 

He let out a biting laugh and handed it back to her, “I find it to be the physical embodiment of perfection.”

 

For a moment, she simply stared at him, rather nonplussed, but then nodded and replied, “Good, because I don’t have any more time for this, Kotomine wants me to be in about five different places at once and if I don’t give him some results well… Actually, there’s a thought, I’m not sure what he can do to me if I don’t get him anything. Either way, I’d better get to something. Now, Rider, Saber, Berserker, or Lancer, given that we have no idea where the hell Caster is?”

 

(Kotomine, she never called him master, even Gilgamesh occasionally referred to Tosaka as a master when the man served a role more as a vassal than anything else.)

 

He mused on this for a moment, his lips twisting into an amused smile at this strange girl who was anything but a girl, “Saber.”

 

“Right, Saber again, I feel like I did Saber last time. I really should get on watching Rider… He’s kind of hard to track though, those two are all over the place, plus it’s very hard to teleport to their location since I haven’t seen him or the master before,” the girl mused before her eyes brightened, “He’s Alexander the Great you know, as master of strategy if there ever was one, I’m sure Lenin would have loved to meet him.”

 

“Rider is nothing more than an upstart mongrel who claims titles which he has no right to,” Gilgamesh scoffed, “The man vexes me.”

 

“Well, I’m sure Lenin would want to meet you too if that makes you feel any better,” Lily commented as she brushed a stray red curl behind her pale ear, “And Arthur Pendragon, although he never said anything about her secretly being a woman this whole time…”

 

“I do not care for the opinion of this Lenin of yours,” Gilgamesh cut in before she herself could unwittingly insult him further, as if he cared for the opinions of the mortal vermin of this modern age.

 

She laughed, a bright joyous amused sound, and yet… And yet he found himself amused with her, as if she were not laughing at him but because of him, and somehow that was more than tolerable.

 

“I’m sorry, that was just, such an unbelievably Lenin thing to say,” she said, a bright grin growing across her lips, “You’d either hate each other or get on like a house on fire, I’m really not sure which.”

 

And with that rather innocently insulting remark she offered him a stiff bow before straightening and smiling so brightly at him, “Until later then, Gilgamesh.”

 

* * *

 

Gilgamesh, without garnish, without title, as if they stood upon equal ground, were comrades in arms rather than an unquestioned king and strange little girl. And yet, he was still smiling even as she warped the fabric of time and space and fell through to wherever it was that Saber and her master were hiding themselves.

 

Yes, he could tolerate this tedium and Tosaka, he couldn’t remember a time when he had been so entertained.

 

* * *

 

 

(Of course, Lily had not realized that Wizard Lenin, upon her disappearance, would have enough intuition and gumption to go to the mage’s association in London, and then to steal the ancient relics acquired by the ninth son of the Archibald family, Keyneth El-Malloi.)

 

* * *

 

Iksander, king of conquerors, and his strange revolutionary master, a man who claimed to barely have a name at all, calling himself ‘Lenin for your purposes’, were seated once more upon the great red bridge crossing the river of Fuyuki, drinking the wine Lenin had been kind enough to purchase in bulk from the local market place.

 

The man, dressed in dark if fine quality clothing poured himself another glass, seemingly unconcerned by his surroundings even as he offered Iksander a dangerous smile as well as a toast, “It says far too much about my life that, even if you had told me ten years ago that I would be sitting on a bridge in Fuyuki, above rushing traffic as well as a great river, getting plastered on muggle wine with none other than the resurrected spirit of Alexander the Great while we are engaged for a war for the holy grail, I wouldn’t have disbelieved it.”

 

Iksander for his own part barked out amused laughter and touched his glass to Lenin’s. He was not quite sure what to make of this man. He was an underhanded, cunning, snake in a grass who had little honor but… Well, he was strangely honorable in how up front he was about this very fact.

 

He alternated in reveling in his own cleverness and confounding those around him with a shocking blunt levity.

 

For example, his desire for the grail, which Iksander had asked after at the first opportunity, he had confessed almost with irritation that he had no desire for the object at all, that anything he could not earn for himself was not worth anything, that instead he was only getting involved in this nonsense for the sake of another summoned servant who he suspected had been coerced into the grail war.

 

Iksander hadn’t known quite what to say to that.

 

Well, he had, he’d confessed his own desire to conquer the world which the man hadn’t seemed put off by in the slightest, instead had treated it as a rather redundant fact, as if of course this would be what Iksander wanted from the grail or else that Iksander’s interests were redundant to him.

 

“Well said, my strange master who longs for kingship,” Iksander eyed him, “You may be horribly puny but your wit does you wonders. You may end up king of your small island yet!”

 

“Thank you,” he offered both wryly and drily, “You’re too kind.”

 

“It is a pity that you do not wish to join my army instead,” Iksander offered, quite genuinely as he had offered even before, should he claim the grail himself and earn his wish then he could imagine the many uses a man such as Lenin could have on a campaign towards the west, towards that ocean at the edge of India which Iksander had never quite reached.

 

“As a good friend of mine often says,” the man said as he took a drink, a smile curving almost unwillingly upon his lips in nostalgia, “There can only be one lord of the rings. I’m afraid I wouldn’t make a good vassal.”

 

“Too stubborn and proud, that’s your trouble,” Iksander scoffed as he threw another glass back down his throat, “You said it has taken you how many years to claim this tiny island?”

 

“Well, to be fair, I was out of commission for eleven of those,” the man groused, eyebrows lowered and now a look of true irritation upon his face, but Iksander just barked a laugh out and continued.

 

“And before I was thirty I had conquered Persia itself and gone on to conquer lands our people had not even heard of in Macedonia,” Iksander pointed out.

 

“And crossed over the mountains of Afghanistan, I know,” Wizard Lenin responded before sighing, “Of course, you did end up drinking yourself to death in Babylon, let’s not forget that, king of conquerors.”

 

“I died as I lived, Lenin, can you say as much?”

 

“Strangely, yes,” Lenin mused, thinking back to that strange event he had briefly talked over with Iksander but never truly exposed details of, something which had to do with why he sought out Assassin.

 

He frowned then, eyed the wine, “This is terrible, I should have gone into the magical district in Fuyuki or Tokyo and gotten some fire whiskey or divine sake, something with a true kick to it. Of course, those places are swarming with mages, and with the grail war on again everyone’s on edge.”

 

“This happens often?”

 

Lenin shook his head, “The last was sixty years ago but they are… Unpredictable and violent, and push the very edges of the statute of secrecy. My people enjoy their privacy from the muggles, and every time there’s a grail war, well, the tension expands just that much.”

 

“And with Lily involved, well, who knows how much collateral damage their might be,” Lenin said, shaking his head.

 

“You speak of Assassin?”

 

Assassin who at the hint of her death, Lenin had burst into hearty laughter, and explained cryptically that such simple means of death could never truly destroy the girl.

 

“Yes,” Lenin said, and then staring out at the river past Iksander, there was a strange uncharacteristic softness to his expression, “How apt, that she should be Assassin rather than Berserker or even Saber or Archer. She is, after all, ultimately a being of destruction and revolution herself.”

 

Then the softness was gone, that bitter dry wit and derision returned to him, “Hopefully, that priest is not as idiotic as half the wizards involved in this madness, and knows what powers are best left untouched even in pursuit of the grail.”

 

“You do not wish to seek her out directly?” Iksander asked then and he looked… There were times when it was easier to remember that this strange man was a man after all, that he had a proud and beating heart as all men did, and for all his passion and his cold determination he had ties in this world as anyone else did.

 

There was a spark of true kingship in this man yet, if only he could search within himself and find it.

 

“No, not with three command seals still binding her to Kotomine,” Lenin remarked, “She would side with me, but unwillingly might follow whatever desperate command comes out of Kotomine’s mouth. And that could get dangerous, no, we must wait until we’re a little further in, and these people start eating each other alive.”

 

“Such a dark sense of humor,” Iksander said with a frown of distaste, “You should think more positively, if you keep frowning like that you’ll start looking like an old man. Of course, that may stop you from looking like a woman at least.”

 

He was clearly a man, but he was just a bit too pretty, his cheek bones too angled, his nose too straight and aristocratic, and his chin too beardless, for Iksander to ever truly call him masculine. Among the Ionian Hetairoi he’d look like a little girl dressed for battle.

 

Iksander’s glass of wine shattered in his hand.

 

“Don’t try me,” Lenin offered with narrowed eyes and a truly terrifying glare that could put the fear of Zeus into any mortal man. And once again, Iksander burst out into hearty laughter, spirits rising as he sat with this strange dark man on the very top of all of Fuyuki.

 

“Oh, laugh while you can,” Lenin huffed, “I’m sure it will all go to hell in a handbasket at any moment.”


	2. Chapter 2

For once, Lily thought as she waltzed down the darkened streets of Fuyuki in her pleated skirt and a carefree grin on her face, her Hogwarts uniform was actually coming in handy, or at least, Lily thought it should.

 

Nothing said, “Kidnap me please Mr. Serial Killer and take me to your death lair,” more than a school girl’s uniform.

 

Gilgamesh, deigning to walk beside her in his somewhat less blinged out (though still wearing a necklace that had to be made of solid gold) attire, seemed to disagree as he frowned down at her in thought as if trying to decide if he disapproved or was instead entertained.

 

Although Gilgamesh generally, Lily had discovered over the days they’d been stuck in each other’s company, had only two modes, disapproval and insult to his own divinity or else amusement at foolish mortal antics.

 

“Gilgamesh, if you were a perverted sociopath, you’d kidnap me right?” Lily asked, motioning down to her outfit, “I mean, I look kidnappable, don’t I?”

 

Lily thought about it and assured herself, “Of course I do, given that I’ve already been kidnapped about four times now I’d say I’m damn kidnappable… Of course, most of those were by some iteration of Lenin for varying reasons or else by magical cups.”

 

She frowned, sighed, and shoved her hands into her pockets and instead focused on that glimmer of magic in the city that she’d been following since sunset, looking for either Caster or his master.

 

“It is beneath me to kidnap virgins and I find it almost insulting that you need ask. However, I find it far more interesting that you have deliberately disregarded your master’s order,” Gilgamesh noted, of course, referring to the fact that Kirei Kotomine had basically laid down the law (sans command seal) that Lily was to keep out of this one and let the other masters take care of the rogue master and servant.

 

Apparently everyone was still convinced she was dead, which, really, Lily could not believe anyone was that stupid. She was sure they were all fully aware that Lily was still in the proverbial game as it was.

 

“Deliberately disregard is a strong phrase,” Lily said with a grimace, “I took his suggestion, carefully mulled it over, and decided that my own plan was better. Besides, I don’t see you keeping your nose out of this.”

 

“I have grown weary of Tosaka’s wine cellar,” Gilgamesh said with a put-upon sigh before his red eyes turned to her and instead giving her a smirk that was almost Leniny, “Besides, I find your ventures far more entertaining.”

 

“Yes, I’m sure this will be hilarious,” Lily groused, for a moment they walked in amiable silence, getting more than a fair number of glances from the locals who happened to pass them (Lily and Gilgamesh looked like Western walking fashion disasters what with Gilgamesh’s snake print pants and golden sandals, she’d tell him how awful that looked, but she hadn’t the heart).

 

“Anyways, I’d feel bad leaving someone like that to his own devices, I mean normally it’s my job to clean up this sort of thing even if it’s not really my problem. And it’s more entertaining than watching Saber and her master drive around in cars again, I can tell you that much,” Lily had spent too much of her life sitting outside the Einzburn castle, or trailing the car, and just waiting for something to happen.

 

Now, Lily had no real issues with Arthur Pendragon, well, aside from her secretly having been a woman the whole time and thus messing up Lily’s entire understanding of the Arthurian legend (if Arthur was a woman then how in god’s name did she knock up her own sister?) But just watching her talk or else run around with a sword and her strange metal skirt, it wasn’t exactly the highlight of Lily’s existence.

 

Even Lancer’s crew had been more interesting, you had haughty blonde man (who had to have some distant relation to Malfoy what with that sneer on his face), his ginger lover and or wife who Lily was betting was waiting for the first opportunity to stab him in the back, and then Lancer himself caught in between these two warring egos.

 

Then their hotel had exploded, which had really upped the ante for them.

 

Arthur Pendragon’s hotel, needless to say, had yet to explode.

 

Either way, tracking down a serial killer with magical powers, now that was more down Lily’s usual avenue of yearly adventures.

 

“Still, you have no true respect for Kirei Kotomine, do you?” Gilgamesh was strangely insistent upon this.

 

“Respect,” Lily repeated dully, wondering if he knew how hypocritical those words were coming out of his mouth, regardless she continued, “Well, I don’t not respect him, (you haven’t seen Snape, you haven’t seen how far my lack of respect can go) but… He’s very hard to get a read on. To be honest, I don’t really know what to make of him.”

 

“He enjoys the suffering of others though he has yet to admit this even to himself,” Gilgamesh said with a cruel smile, looking positively delighted by the untangling of Kirei Kotomine’s twisted soul.

 

“Schadenfreude you mean,” Lily grimaced, not really having enough evidence to disagree with this statement, and wondering if that flat look in Kirei’s eyes was only evidence for Gilgamesh’s point. She preferred not to think too deeply about Kotomine, “Well, if your master wasn’t half as ridiculous as he is I’d suggest we switch, since you seem to enjoy Kotomine so very much.”

 

“I thought you approved of Tosaka,” Gilgamesh ventured and Lily raised up a pale hand to stop that thought.

“No, not at all,” Lily said, “He’s an idiot of the highest order and it’s going to get him killed very shortly, I’m sure… That’s going to break his daughter’s heart.”

 

This, if anything seemed to amuse Gilgamesh further, if Tosaka weren’t responsible for supplying Gilgamesh with magical energy and giving him form on this plane then Lily was sure Gilgamesh would have lasered and or sworded him to death days ago.

 

That man was baiting a dragon, and from what Lily had seen and heard of him, he didn’t even seem to realize it.

 

“Still, for now, Lily, I look forward to your disposal of this mongrel Caster and his master,” Gilgamesh said, and from what she could tell he really meant it, but then he didn’t really seem the sly type, or at least, not in that regard.

 

He made no pretenses of what he thought of himself and what he expected and thought of others. No, his manipulation was a stranger thing than that, instead it was an unwinding of sorts, a small paradigm shift as he amused himself watching these mortal monkeys dance.

 

Kirei Kotomine, she knew, was his latest mortal monkey, and she was sure that in his own wet blanket repressed way, the priest was starting to dance.

 

Finally, after walking in silence, somewhat strained on Lily’s part and rather amused and anticipatory on Gilgamesh’s, she caught sight of him. He wasn’t much to look at, auburn haired, dressed in casual modern clothing, looking nothing like a wizard if she was being honest, but there on his wrist was a purple glowing bauble that let off a distinct magical aura.

 

More, on one of his hands, the three squiggly tattoos that signified a master.

 

“Bingo,” Lily said, she brushed off her skirt, made her smile wider, and stepped forward only to stop when Gilgamesh continued to keep pace with her.

 

“Oh, don’t mind me, I am but a mere spectator,” Gilgamesh offered with a smile of his own, still with that cruel and anticipatory edge.

 

“He’s not going to kidnap me if he sees you hanging around,” Lily hissed, while Lily was only slightly older than this man’s preferred age group, and could probably attract his attention if she wore a school girl uniform, Gilgamesh in his snake pants and gold bling would have him running in the opposite direction.

 

“I fail to see how this is a problem of mine, girl,” Gilgamesh supplied, oh so very unhelpfully.

 

“I can’t get rid of him here, the ministry will be all over our asses, plus then we’ll have no idea where his better half is,” Lily said, motioning to their surroundings. Not to mention Lenin would just about kill Lily, which was what she was more concerned about in all of this.

 

Gilgamesh appeared unmoved by this argument.

 

Finally, watching the man walk past them, she insisted, “I promise, Gilgamesh, that it will be very very entertaining. More entertaining than watching me curb stomp him here, I promise!”

 

“I shall hold you to that, Destroyer of Worlds,” Gilgamesh said, and then began to dematerialize into golden light, leaving Lily, supposedly, on her own.

 

Forcing the grin back onto her face she approached the man in question (although man really was pushing it, he only looked a few years older than she did… Which somehow made this a little weirder).

 

“Excuse me, mister!” Lily stumbled in front of him, did her best to appear younger and more kidnappable than she already was, “Mister, I’m afraid I’m new to Fuyuki and extremely lost.”

 

The man blinked at her, offered her a smile that was almost charming but was a little too cheerful to quite manage it, and said, “I’m sorry, I’m a bit busy right now…”  


“I also like entering strange unmarked white vans and being given candy by the driver,” Lily cut in before he could continue, and he blinked at her almost dumbly as Lily blurted, “It’s my favorite hobby!”

 

Then, seeing the flash of uncertainty in his eyes, she pressed forward, blinking her eyes rapidly, “And whenever I get into strange unmarked white vans, I’m always sure to wear my Catholic school girl uniform.”

 

“You’re a very strange girl, aren’t you?” he asked, rubbing the back of his head sheepishly and even flushing, by god did he have no right to do that given his questionable hobbies.

 

“…Yes?” Lily asked, not sure if strange was kidnappable or not, especially since she didn’t appear to be getting anywhere. Dammit, the one time she actually wanted to be abducted somewhere and here it was failing miserably!

 

For an instant, she tried to Obi-Wan Kenobi her way out of this but… But there was some protective thing around him, either from being a master or from some enchantment Caster had set, which blocked her handy dandy mind control. Or at least, likely made it impossible without turning him into a drooling brain damaged idiot (and then she’d be right back where she started trying to track down Caster).

 

And on the other side of the street she could hear hearty and rather familiarly derisive laughter, whipping her head she spotted Gilgamesh, still in his casual wear that should have died a good death in 1979, practically bent over himself and pointing at her in hysterical laughter.

 

“Can I help you, jackass?!” Lily shouted across the street at him, which, normally would probably have had Gilgamesh after her head (certainly a few days ago he would not have seen her live through that kind of insult), but this only seemed to make him laugh harder.

 

“Well, sorry I can’t help you…”

 

“No, no, you have to help me, please! I am so very lost and vulnerable and wearing a skirt,” Lily said, gripping him by the color of his purple shirt, then motioning to herself, continued, “Look at my sweet pre… Well, post-pubescent but small breasted body! I, sir, am positively adorable!”

 

She needed to burst into tears, right now, it was the only way. Lily held her eyes open, tried to make them water, stared without blinking into this man’s face…

 

Clearly that wasn’t working, she had to think of something horrifically sad. Dying puppies, no that did nothing. Lily dying, she did that all the time… Gilgamesh, king of heroes, laughing at her across the street, making her feel more humiliated than she’d ever been since Dumbledore made her quidditch captain.

 

There we go, tears of rage and humiliation were still tears, weren’t they?

 

Apparently so because that look of uncertainty was instead replaced by a soft kind smile as he took her hands in his and reassured, “I’m sorry, I wasn’t thinking, I can help you find where you need to go, but we should get you inside first.”  


“Oh, thank you, you’re too kind,” Lily said, wiping the tears from her eyes and making sure to give Gilgamesh one final glare as he now collapsed against a wall. Honestly, he was making this that much harder than it needed to be, and he’d also made it clear that he’d be putting in zero effort into this venture.

 

Then, a cheerful smile to her cheerfully smiling murdering companion, she stuck her arm in his and walked down the street to certain death and destruction.

 

* * *

 

“And you are sure Caster and his master are this way?”

 

His master however, as usual, seemed unmoved by Iskander’s doubt. Of course, he had little reason to be moved, from the sheer mana he supplied as well as what little of his intellect Iskander had seen thus far, he had a fair amount of reason to be as proud and self-assured as he was.

 

All the same, for this task of disposing of Caster, for which the war had been officially suspended, the ease at which Lenin had tracked down the pair was almost alarming.

 

“When you dabble in dark magics for as long as I have you can practically smell it,” his master explained from his position towards the front of the chariot, “And this pair seems to understand nothing of subtlety.”

 

Then with a shrug, he added, “That, and, in general, if there’s one place one should begin looking for a dark wizard it’s in the catacombs, or in this case, the closest thing Fuyuki has available.”

 

By which, he of course meant the drains which ran into the river itself, along which Iskander and him were currently journeying.

 

“It just seems quite fast, for a man whose usual mode of action seems to be to assess a given situation almost to the point of cowardice,” Iskankder remarked, ignoring the unamused look directed at him by his master. This was not to say that Iskander himself flaunted strategy or assessing the terrain, quite the opposite, but this Lenin seemed curiously insistent upon it, like a snake lying in wait.

 

Iskander was beginning to understand why it had taken this man decades to conquer even his homeland; he’d likely spent almost all of it waiting for his enemies to kill each other rather than leading the charge into battle himself.

 

Except of course, when he had led the charge himself, he’d incapacitated himself for eleven years in attempting to destroy a prophesized warrior.

 

So perhaps it was simply that Lenin, while he had the potential for kingship, was not quite ready for any throne.

 

“Stop,” Lenin commanded then pointed into a long dark tunnel, “That one, and slowly, while they don’t seem the type to set wards or traps I won’t put it past them either.”

 

“I think, boy, that you have spent your life going too slowly and too carefully,” Iskander remarked, and with a great cry and whip of the reigns, they flew into the darkened corridor with the lightning of the Gordius Wheel lighting their path and whatever terrors they happened to pass by.

 

“Boy?!” the man cried out in outrage, “I’ll have you know that I have outlived you by four decades! I am hardly a boy!”

 

“You lack the beard and courage of a grown man,” Iskader remarked with a boisterous laugh as the barreled down into the dark and the unknown, “If you cannot face your demons as a man then you will forever remain a boy, my revolutionary companion!”

 

“There is a difference between courage and stupidity as well as caution and cowardice!” Lenin said before crying out a spell to cast a protective shield around the chariot.

 

“And yet, you still met your maker for all your caution and intelligence,” Iskander said with a frown, “Can you truly not regret all those years you spent lying in wait?”

 

“I regret nothing!” Lenin hissed, and for a moment Iskander wondered if he could see a spark of divine fire in those pale blue eyes, but then his master relented and instead groused, “You sound aggravatingly like Lily at times, I think it’s why I dislike you so much.”

 

“Oh? I sound like Assassin?” now there was a thought, Iskander had always been under the impression that Assassin was a lowly skulking being who enjoyed dark corners and ambushes in the night.

 

“Well, for all that she is adept at assassination she has the heart of a berserker,” Lenin explained, “Which is why we’re moving so very quickly, we have to beat her to the punchline and no doubt she has some ridiculous scheme already in play to bring her into contact with the enemy. If she disposes of him before we get there, then her master earns himself another command seal.”

 

“You seem very concerned over these command seals on your friend,” and he truly did, Iskander thought, there was a strange fear in his eyes, whenever he thought of Assassin’s master the priest Kirei Kotomine.

 

“If you knew her, you would be too,” Lenin answered before darkly explaining, “Those command seals grant him infinite power, likely more power even than the grail itself, through her abilities. Needless to say, this terrifies me.”

 

Then holding up a hand he commanded, “Stop! We’re here.”

 

They stopped and even as Lenin lifted his mage’s wand to cast light into the darkness, Iskander wished that he would not, for they had found themselves in a hell that Iskander could have scarce imagine existed.

 

Even should he close his eyes the scent of blood itself would be overpowering.

 

Lenin, his master, stood very straight and still in the dark, a brilliant white light emitted from his wand, and for a moment he himself seemed almost dead for how silent he was.

 

And then, in the distance, there was the cool and clear voice of a girl who could be only just past her throes of adolescence, “I’ll make this very clear, summon your servant, or you will die here, in agony, and your corpse will be left to rot among the children you’ve slaughtered like pigs and you will be forgotten for all eternity.”

 

Staring out, there, by a pillar, the red headed Assassin in the uniform of a school child, clothes splattered with blood, pinning a young man with a command seal against the concrete and with the promise of death in her green eyes and a shining steel blade in her hands against the man’s throat.

 

And standing behind her, in golden amused splendor, the king of heroes, “I do not think he means to listen to you, Lily.”

 

“Did I ask for your advice, Gilgamesh?!” the girl cried out without turning around, appearing to be at her wits end even as she pressed the blade closer to the man’s throat, “Now, do it, before I lose my patience entirely.”

 

Ahead of Iskander, Lenin sighed, seemed to slump in on himself, and out into the dark towards Assassin, Archer, and the master of Caster, he asked, “Lily, tell me, why am I not surprised by meeting you in such violently surreal circumstances?” 

 

* * *

 

The man took her, holding her hand with his with the glowing bracelet attempting to steal her will from her, to a darkened closed bar where, upon stepping inside, she saw piles of children spread out among the room, eyes glazed like dead mackerels at market.

 

Although, soon enough, she was certain that the dullness in their eyes would reflect their actual deceased state.

 

He turned his back to her, and Lily for an instant tried to decide upon his manner of death, he seemed like the type that needed to be burned alive. Except… Except Caster wasn’t here, and if Caster wasn’t here, and she killed his master, what the hell happened to Caster? She felt like she should know this, the grail itself had probably told her or Kotomine had or somebody, but she actually had no idea.

 

For all she knew she might have to kill them both at the same time, which meant creepy master had to live at least until he summoned Caster or else Caster returned from wherever.

 

That would be just her luck and very in theme with all of this…

 

The man disappeared into a back room while Lily did her best drugged goldfish impersonation and, when he was out of sight and presumably out of hearing, called out to Gilgamesh, “Gilgamesh! I’ve forgotten the rules, will Caster still be here if I kill his master? Or do I have to kill Caster first or both at the same time?”

 

Gilgamesh appeared, this time in his golden gleaming armor, seeming to glow even in the dark, and he looked down at her while standing on a table in amusement, “You were right girl, I do find myself entertained by this. For a being so powerful, you find yourself in rather amusing situations, don’t you?”

 

“This is a very important question!” Lily cried out, eyes darting to the backroom, who knew what he was doing back there but likely he’d be back soon enough.

 

“I imagine so, for the mongrels of the world, but your ceaseless struggles amuse me,” Gilgamesh offered with that entirely unsympathetic smirk that she now wanted to wipe off his gloating bastard face.

 

“Besides, I find such trivial details of this petty battle far beneath me,” Gilgamesh said as he crossed his arms and simply waited.

 

Well, she had a few options then, one, seduce creepy murderer into showing her his actual evil layer where he dumped the bodies and Caster would show up. Of course, Lily had some dignity, and Caster might not be there, and Lily really wasn’t going to sacrifice what was left of her dignity in front of jeering Gilgamesh.

 

The other option was to start threatening him…

 

She preferred that option, especially since Gilgamesh didn’t seem to be giving up his front row seat anytime soon judging by his anticipatory grin as the man stepped back into the room. Lily summoned Gryffindor’s sword from the ether, holding it aloft for a moment, then summoning the master into her hands so that she could press the blade against his throat even as she stared at him in the eyes.

 

There, inside of him, was an image of a sewer overflowing with bodies, secluded even more than this…

 

Without a word, trusting Gilgamesh to follow easily enough, she warped space and time and teleported herself and this young man into his body pit.

 

(And good lord she could smell the blood, even without looking at the bodies, it smelled like war and rotting and sheer death.)

 

Then she slammed him against a concrete pillar, pinning him like the other children he’d left crucified in this place, “Now, I am tired, and I have run out of patience for you. I will give you two choices, either you summon your servant to defend you, or I run Goblin steel through your throat. What will it be?”

 

And staring death itself in her green eyes, this man’s lips twitched upwards, and he laughed.

 

(And of course, it was just like Lenin to show up out of nowhere, with Gilgamesh laughing behind her, watching as Lily tried and failed to intimidate the life out of this son of a bitch.)

 

 

* * *

 

 

The girl turned, not dropping the man she was holding up through will and mana and a steel blade, but her hold loosening as she stared across at that mongrel Rider and his master, an overjoyed grin growing on her face.

 

Gilgamesh found himself turning with her, wishing there were somewhere higher he could stand so that he could look down upon these beings, and more feeling something in himself twist at the genuine nature of the girl’s expression.

 

She smiled often, but it was usually a reaction of the moment, a quick and flighty thing with nothing truly deep inside of it. This smile, this was different than those.

 

“Lenin!” Lily cried out to him, “What are you doing here?”

 

The man in question, Lenin, Lily’s Lenin Gilgamesh now realized and dark mage of England, looked somewhat irritated by this question (but there was a fondness there to, a familiarity, as if he had expected this from her and was not disappointed by it), “What do you think I’m doing here, Lily? You have gotten yourself wrapped up in the grail war of all things.”

 

“Hey now, this is not my fault,” Lily started only for the man, the mongrel, to dare interject over her. (And why was she accepting his blatant disregard of her? Was this where her own insulting impudence came from? The fact that no mongrel dared to treat her with the respect that was her divine right?)

 

“You could have said no!” The man said, stepping forward, dutifully ignoring the severed hands in his path, “More, the grail had no business summoning a living servant to enter the…”

 

“Well, Lenin, can I help it that the holy grail is broken beyond repair?” Lily asked cutting him off, “Or the universe for that matter, I mean clearly this is…”

 

“If you say that this is yet another sign that the universe is swiftly meeting it’s end then I swear to God I will kill you myself.”

 

This, finally, seemed to at least partially annoy her as her eyebrows lowered and she fell into silence, but the man did not seem in the least bit cowed by her displeasure. Somehow, Gilgamesh felt, he’d found a mongrel more impudent than even a man who would declare himself king in Gilgamesh’s presence.

 

No, this man was far worse, this was a man who had tried and failed to be a king.

 

“Lily, who is this impudent mongrel who dares to chastise you?”

 

Lily’s Lenin turned to look at Gilgamesh, to dare look upon him with his pale blue eyes, and his dark eyebrows raised dubiously as if he was silently repeating the same question back.

 

Lily looked back over her shoulder to Gilgamesh, blinking, as if only just remembering his glorious presence in favor of her focusing on the dark-haired mortal mongrel next to her, “Oh, right, Gilgamesh, this is Lenin, wizarding revolutionary and future dictator of magical Great Britain and my longtime companion. Lenin, this is Gilgamesh of Babylon and Uruk, king of heroes, and I think he might be two thirds god or something… I think we’re friends.”

 

There was a tense silence as Gilgamesh observed the man and the man in turn observed Gilgamesh, and with such impudence, as if he was amused by the idea of Gilgamesh rather than cowering beneath his feet as any truly devout subject would surely do.

 

“Right, well, you two seem to be hitting it off… Hey, Lenin, you’re Rider’s master? That’s great!” Lily then offered a cheerful wave to Rider who seemed somewhat stunned by all of this, still standing in his chariot with a wary eye on the mongrel as well as Gilgamesh, as he well should as Gilgamesh had half a mind to smite him right here to teach his master as well as the servant himself a lesson.

 

“I’d come over and greet you properly but as you can see I’m a bit… busy,” Lily finished with a grimace, eyes flicking down briefly to their surroundings then back to the mongrel she had been so ineffectively threatening (although there was something beautifully glorious in the way she righteously held that blade to his neck, the lack of any human compromise in her eyes as she leaned in towards him and whispered death into his ear).

 

“Do you want to die?” she asked plainly, and the man just stared at them all, eyes flicking to all of them and… giggled.

 

And she looked so very stunned, so very at a loss at what to do, that Gilgamesh couldn’t help but forget himself for a single instant and laugh at her delightful adventures.

 

(What had he ever done without her?)

 

“…He has a very high pain tolerance,” Lily explained dully.

 

“Well,” the mongrel dared to say as his pale eyes roved over the man pinned to the wall, “I’d say all this is unnecessary, as slaying the master cuts off the servant’s supply of magic and thus his means of accessing the material world, however judging by how hideously muggle this man is I suppose Caster is existing on this plane mostly through his own magic. Even if you kill this pitiful excuse of a human being, Caster will still wreak havoc.”

 

“Oh, well, that’s wonderful,” Lily said derisively, “Thank you, Lenin, for reassuring me that I have not wasted my night.”

 

“Clearly,” the man said stepping forward and putting his hand over top of hers, ignoring the force of Gilgamesh’s glare, “You simply aren’t trying hard enough.”

 

“I am very intimidating!” Lily barked out but the man seemed unimpressed by this.

 

“Well, as far as I can see he’s still possessing all of his limbs and he’s not vomiting in complete terror at the sight of you… I hate to say this, Lily, but you are an amateur in this arena.” And then a small, soft, derisive if somehow fond smile.

 

“Fine!” Lily said, backing up and allowing the man to drop to the floor like a limp rag doll even while she sheathed her sword and crossed her arms petulantly, “Since you’ve just volunteered you can kick the shit out of Buffalo Bill and see how it works out for you!”

 

The dark-haired man picked the man up where Lily had dropped him, pinned him against the wall once again, and calmly said as he smiled at the young man, sweat pouring down his face as he stared Lily’s mongrel in the eyes, “I’ll start with the fingers, then.”

 

Lily took the opportunity to wander past Gilgamesh to Rider, of all people, with her hand outstretched and a grin on her face, “Hi, I’m Lily, or well Assassin apparently. I’m a large fan, although Lenin as you probably know is a larger one…”

 

She then cast an eye towards their surroundings and blanched, “Sorry about meeting in such blood-soaked circumstances, it’s really not ideal, but well Gilgamesh and I were in the neighborhood and we thought it best someone take care of this guy. Although it seems like you and Lenin were on it.”

 

“Ah yes, I am Iskander, king of conquerors, my master has spoken much of you,” the man then cast an eye back to his own master, “As well as his own prowess in the art of treachery.”

 

“Yes, Lenin is something of a two-faced bastard and a man of extreme violence,” Lily commented, glancing back to where the mongrel was now snapping back Caster’s master’s fingers, the younger man crying out in agony but remaining silent in the face of Lenin’s whispered threats.

 

“He’s just so good at it though,” Lily added, “You almost have to admire it.”

 

“True, and he was rather upfront with his darker nature, which I have found myself strangely appreciative of.”

 

Gilgamesh, seeing that Lily did not intend to return rightfully to his side, instead saw to ignore his presence for far inferior beings, dematerialized and reappeared in a swath of golden light on Lily’s other side, “Why do you insist on speaking to such vermin?”

 

“Hey, I like him,” Lily said before glancing back at the upstart pretender in question, “He’s much friendlier than I thought he’d be, and taller too.”

 

“Oh, right, you might not have met,” Lily then appeared to realize and she motioned from Rider to Gilgamesh in turn, “Alexander, this is Gilgamesh of Babylon, king of heroes, warper of reality, and pillager of Tosaka’s wine cellar. Gilgamesh, this is Alexander the Great of Macedonia, who once conquered a good chunk of Asia before drinking himself to death in Babylon... You have so much in common!”

 

Rider offered Lily a somewhat grim smile as he said, “Yes, we have met already.”

 

As if this man had any right to be displeased by Gilgamesh’s presence, honestly, the audacity was staggering. Gilgamesh instead chose to ignore one mongrel for another, his eyes trained on the thin dark-haired man, taller than Gilgamesh even, leaning over this shivering cowering mortal with a curiously intense gleam to his pale eyes.

 

Still, Gilgamesh could not see what Lily could possibly see in this man to have stared at him as if he were the sun itself.

 

“I was thinking of having a discussion among kings over drink about the fate of the grail,” Rider confessed to Lily as well as Gilgamesh, “Originally among us three who call ourselves kings, though you yourself are welcome to join, girl who lived.”

 

“Thank you,” Lily said with a cheerful and gracious smile, “Anything that gets me out of the church basement is greatly appreciated.”

 

Well then, Gilgamesh would have to be there as well, if only because he was less and less liking the idea of his Lily going around unchaperoned by the likes of these mongrels as well as to put said mongrels in their place. Besides, the wine had to be better than Tosaka’s.

 

There was a great sigh as well as some whimpering, all three looked over to see the man with twisted broken fingers, and an almost bewildered expression on Lenin’s face as he stared back at them, “There’s something seriously wrong with this young man.”

 

“He kills people, Lenin,” Lily responded dismissively but Lenin waved a pale hand.

 

“No, not that,” he stopped looked back at the man who was grinning and shaking and still laughing, now demanding more, “His pain tolerance is unbelievable. I’d use the cruciatus curse but I don’t think a muggle can last under it… I may actually have to start cutting off hands.”

 

Lily then glanced at the floor, at the severed hands of children surrounding them then looked up, “Maybe that’s what he wants, maybe his stomach is making the rumblies, the kind that only hands can satisfy.”

 

Sometimes Gilgamesh wondered what went through that girl’s head, clearly too much time spent surrounded by vermin and mongrels.

 

Lenin, rightly, did not respond to this but instead sent the young quivering man a rather exasperated look, “Your options, my friend, are rather limited. Either you summon your servant and have some hope of escape or I cut off your hand and watch you bleed to death.”

 

“This is… This is what I’ve been looking for the whole time!” the man cried out, looking overjoyed even through his tears.

 

“Stomach rumblies,” Lily explained in the following silence, which, in her usual manner, explained absolutely nothing at all.

 

Lenin moved his wand forward, pressing it against the non-sealed hand, a dangerous red glow emitting from the end, but then he stopped, looked up, and said, “They will count this as a victory for Assassin and Archer.”

 

“What?” Rider asked but the man seemed to pay no mind.

 

“We all have confronted him, but there are no witnesses, and Assassin and Archer happened upon him first. The church has been hiding Kotomine and is likely siding with Tosaka, they will disregard my efforts and give the command seals to Tosaka and Kotomine, and we will be written out of this picture.” Lenin lowered his wand, stepped back from the young man and patted his cheek almost reassuringly.

“It seems, my depraved friend, that you will have to meet your maker some other night.”

 

Rider balked as Lenin walked back towards the chariot, “You cannot simply leave this man to his own devices! He is a beast among men, a slaughterer of children!”

 

Lenin did not look back, but instead walked with the regal impudence of a man who longed for kingship, “Such is the price of the grail war, I won’t make any pretense otherwise, even if you will.”

 

“Lenin, I’m actually with them on this one, I am not comfortable leaving him alive,” Lily stated, motioning towards their surroundings and the corpses of children, a beast’s layer if there ever was one.

 

“I will not hand another seal to Kotomine!” the man barked, and for the way he looked at her and the way she paled, Gilgamesh almost opened the Gate of Babylon then and there and cast a sword through this man’s heart.

 

For a moment Lily stared but then a shadow crossed over her face and the divine light entered her eyes, she unsheathed her sword and without a word summoned the man into it, skewering him directly through the heart, then with a mere twitch of her fingers, the layer burst into flames whose hungry eyes feasted upon the corpses of children, “Caster will live, Kotomine has no victory to claim here.”

 

“Now, Alexander, why don’t we get that drinking party started now, since we’re all here together anyway?”


	3. Chapter 3

“Servants, three of them!”

 

Artoria had been in one too many battles already, the previous night facing off against Caster’s endless hellish legion of nightmarish beasts, only Lancer’s honor and chivalry granting them a temporary victory in the battle with Excalibur’s true strength denied with the loss of her left hand.

 

It had been an honorable loss against an honorable man, although it had seemed underhanded at the time. Of the servants she had seen thus far, Diarmuid Ua Duibhane was the only one she could truly understand and respect, if only because he too respected and subscribed to the chivalric code that Artoria had devoted her life to.

 

The boisterous Rider seemed to think nothing of the plight of his own people and only of conquest, Archer only of himself and his own glory, Berserker seemed incapable of thought at all, and Caster… Caster had turned out to be a monster whose humanity itself had to be gravely questioned.

 

Assassin she had not seen yet, but anyone bearing that class, surely, had no honor within them.

 

These though, these were the great heroes of humanity, and something in Artoria burned at that thought.

 

Still, on her own she had been failing against Caster, and with Lancer’s aid they had only just caused his retreat. Against three servants at once, three servants who were not Lancer and not facing a common wretched enemy, well, privately Artoria feared for her chances, especially as her master had decided to, instead of hunting down Caster, track down Lancer’s wounded master. However, she would not allow Iri to glimpse her fear, not now.

 

She held Excalibur, cloaked in wind mana, aloft and waited on the red staircase of the Einzburn castle as there, out of lightning and smoke, Rider’s great chariot appeared and riding inside, his dark-haired master, Archer, and the girl that must be Assassin.

 

She was… So young, younger even than Artoria, only just older than she had been when she had drawn the sword from the stone. Next to Rider and even Archer she was positively dwarfed, dwarfed even by the silver blade on her back which clearly had not been forged for her, and yet there was such a cheerful grin on her face, opposed to the annoyance of Rider’s master and Archer.

 

(And though her hair was red and overflowing with curls, her face far paler and more elfin than Artoria’s had ever been, her eyes were such a shade of green that Artoria could see the younger version of herself inside of her…)

 

At coming to a stop, the girl vaulted with a strange unnatural grace (almost seeming to float for a moment before her feet touched the earth) out of the chariot and stretched upon the gilded floor of the castle, “That thing was not built for four people and a barrel of wine.”

 

Archer dematerialized into golden flecks of light before reappearing next to her, a derisive look on his face as he gazed at the chariot, “I find your means of transportation, mongrel, to be just as uncouth as you yourself are.”

 

Rider blinked at them and pointed out rather bluntly, in his characteristic manner, “You did not have to ride if you did not wish to.”

 

“I’m not complaining, it’s a very nice chariot, just that if given the choice again I probably wouldn’t get inside if there’s four of us plus wine,” Assassin explained, with a rather dramatic wave of her hand which caused a snort of amused contempt from Archer standing next to her.

 

Rider ignored this, and instead turned to Artoria and Irisviel and raised a hand towards them in a salute.

 

“Hello Saber,” Rider called out in joyous greeting, as if he was truly glad to see her armed and ready for battle upon the stair, “We have come to see your castle and engage in discussion over kingship and the fate of the grail as well as celebrate temporary victory against a common enemy.”

 

Rider then looked about the golden halls and noted, “Although it’s kind of gloomy here, don’t you think?”

 

This seemed to be a rhetorical question, not that Artoria had given much thought to the splendor of the Einzburn halls, the splendor which shadowed even Camelot of her own time, as the man motioned to her and continued, “And what’s with that tasteless armor? Are you going out to fight someone right now?”

 

“Hey now, she might have come from a fight,” Assassin pointed out on Artoria’s silent and stunned behalf, “I have no idea what Lancer has been up to for the past few days or Caster for that matter. And it’s not as if any of us are in casual wear either.”

 

Assassin did not seem to recognize the hopelessly modern and flimsy state of her own battle armor which, to Artoria’s look, resembled the uniform of a school student.

 

“True, I had not considered that she too would have been coming from battle,” Rider mused, stroking his chin as if in deep thought, “Perhaps it is good we came now then, as Saber will also likely wish to drink to her victory.”

 

Victory, was that what she was to call Caster’s retreat and the injury of Lancer’s master? Somehow, it did not taste like true victory inside of her mouth.

 

“Rider, Archer, Assassin, what are you doing here?” Artoria demanded, eyes landing on each of them, Rider looking up in bemused confusion, Assassin with great blinking green eyes, and Archer with an arched eyebrow and an amused smirk.

 

“You mean you can’t tell?” Rider asked, and before she could respond, he lifted a great barrel onto his shoulder and grinned across at her, “We’ve come to drink! What else does it look like we’ve come here to do?”

 

That was the trouble, Artoria had no idea what it looked like any of them were there to do. Rider alone was a surreal enough enemy, but to be joined by the haughty Archer, as well as the mysterious and childlike Assassin…

 

And to drink?

 

Meanwhile Assassin edged closer to one of the walls, eyes set on a painting and called out over her shoulder, “Hey Lenin, is this a Rembrandt? I think they have a Rembrandt in here! And are the floors actually solid gold or is that my imagination. And I thought I had too much money, just what have the Einzburns been up to?”

 

“No, Lily, that’s not a Rembrandt,” Rider’s master, Lenin apparently, responded, looking quite irate and fed up with all of this.

 

“Looks like a Rembrandt,” Assassin muttered towards the painting, stroking her chin and tilting her head to get a better view of it, seemingly completely unconcerned by Artoria and Iri.

 

“It’s not a…” the man trailed off, squinted in the direction Assassin was looking, then paled and said, “I’ll be damned, it is a Rembrandt.”

 

“Are you going to stand there like a statue all night?” Rider called out to Artoria, “Show us around this place, Saber! Surely you have a garden here suitable for a banquet. Honestly, this castle is far too dusty…”

 

Artoria exchanged an incredulous look with Iri but, well, there seemed nothing for it. Quickly enough she, Rider, Assassin, and strangely enough Rider’s master were arranged in the courtyard of the Einzburn castle, in the center surrounded by trimmed hedges and wards fueled with mana, watching with determination and disguised disbelief as Rider broke through the wooden barrel with his hand alone and began drinking wine like a parched man who had been travelling through the desert.

 

Iri watched, still standing behind Artoria, likely readying herself for ambush at any moment as Artoria was readying herself. No matter his strange behavior and seemingly amiable nature, Rider was not her friend.

 

“Careful Iskander,” Rider’s master chided as the man drank, “Drink that whole barrel and you may end up killing yourself again before any servant gets the chance.”

 

Rider barked out a laugh and whacked his master across the shoulders, “A true man does not fear his tolerance for mere market place wine!”

 

“A true man does not consume wretched market place wine,” Archer said, slit cat like red eyes eyeing the barrel in utter contempt.

 

“I don’t know, Gilgamesh,” Assassin said addressing Archer as she took the filled ladle from Rider and throwing it back down her throat, “You drank through Tosaka’s wine cellar in what has to be record time.”

 

“The joys of provoking my master outweighed the sour taste of common fermented grapes,” Archer shot back, but rather than look irritated at her he looked instead bemused at the sight of her drinking wine.

 

Or at least, until Rider’s master knocked the ladle from her pale uncalloused hands, “I do not need you drunk!”

 

“I just waded through the mutilated bodies of children in the sewer,” Assassin balked, the ladle somehow filling itself without her dipping it into the barrel, “I need me drunk.”

 

“Rider,” Artoria finally interrupted, as Rider took up the label, dipped it into the wine and passed it towards her, “What exactly did you wish to discuss?”

 

The oversized king of conquerors grinned across at her from his cross-legged position, “The grail is said to be fated for the hands of the one most worthy to possess it. And the epic battle taking place here in Fuyuki will determine exactly who that person is.”

 

Rider now held all their attention as he spoke, each of them listening to him silently, their own thoughts shrouded behind sharp eyes, as he continued.

 

“And if it’s simply a means to decide that fact, there’s hardly a need for bloodshed. After all, if the heroic spirits can agree on our rankings, then the matter can simply settle itself!”

 

Artoria downed the wine in the ladle, which was indeed not the greatest wine she had ever come across, but certainly not so sour as Archer claimed and handed it back with burning eyes to Rider who took it with bemusement.

 

“Then I assume you wish to compare your rank against my own, Rider, Archer, and Assassin,” Artoria said, looking to each of them in turn, Assassin merely shrugged her thin shoulders in the gray material of her uniform.

 

“Actually, I just came for the after party and the company, you can consider me Gilgamesh’s plus one,” Assassin explained with a grin that was far too light and easy as she directed it towards Artoria, “I really have no interest in the grail and thus no real stake in all of this.”

 

“Although, I have wanted to talk to you,” the girl continued, snatching the ladle from Rider’s hand and filling it once again without making the slightest move towards the barrel, some devilish sorcery whose source Artoria could not divine, “You see, and this is going to sound unbelievably rude, but I’m actually very confused how you’re a woman.”

 

Rider’s master placed his face into one of his hands, seeming to be dying from embarrassment even as Archer barked out a laugh, “Lily, honestly…”

 

Assassin paid him no mind as she continued after a long drink, “No, no, this has been getting to me all week, I need to know.”

 

She then pointed a pale finger at Artoria, “Presuming Arthur Pendragon is a woman then the Arthurian legend makes no bloody sense. First off, if Arthur is not married to Guinevere, then why the hell does it matter if Lancelot and her get down and dirty? Or, is Arthur married to Guinevere in a ridiculous political marriage, but then what the hell is the bloody point of that since they’re not going to have children.”

 

“Sir Lancelot, but I…” Artoria was cut off before she could interject, the girl barreling onward without any heed towards Artoria.

 

“And, more importantly, if Arthur is a woman, then how is he seduced by his disguised sister Morgan, and impregnates her, and thus being slain by his bastard son Modred years later. I mean, that one really has me scratching my head.”

 

“I do not have a son!” Artoria cried out, and this time they all were looking at her in varying shades of disbelief, well, all but Rider’s master who still seemed more embarrassed by Assassin’s tactless display than anything else.

 

At least, until Archer began to cackle, “Truly, Lily, you have missed your calling as my jester. How you would have made the banquets of Babylon an utter delight.”

 

“That is… a more sordid tale than I would have expected of you, king of knights,” Rider said blankly, taking the ladle back from Assassin and digging into the barrel for more wine.

 

“There is… some truth in it, I will admit, I did dress as a man during my reign and did have a sister by the name of Morgan, but the truth is but a small grain and clearly distorted by the ages!” Artoria cried out, feeling her face flush even as she said this, to know that her own legend had been so twisted by time.

 

“But those are the best parts of the Arthurian legend,” Lily said before shooting a look towards Rider’s silent master, “Fine, the most dramatic parts of the Arthurian legend, I guess there is the whole Lady in the Lake thing, the search for the grail, the sword in the stone… I guess I’ll chalk this up to the universe not making sense again.”

 

“Have you no honor?” Saber asked the girl, but why should she ask, of course not, this was Assassin, her very class defied honor.

 

“The word you’re looking for is tact,” Rider’s master answered for Assassin, “And no, she has absolutely none. You’ll have to learn to tolerate it.”

 

Archer, it seemed as Artoria glared balefully at him, more than tolerated it as he was smiling more freely at Artoria’s mulish expression than he had any right to.

 

“At any rate, we were discussing something about ranking ourselves and world peace?” Assassin asked, prompting Rider from his watching of the girl’s ignorant rambling and insult to Artoria’s honor, to start again.

 

“Right, well, I do wish to compare my rank to yours,” Rider continued, gathering his wits and beginning once again, “As one who also claims the title of king, you cannot refuse this opportunity. You might consider this a grail dialogue rather than a grail war. And the matter of who among us is most suited to claim the holy grail will become clear to us as we drink our fill and converse.”

 

“I believe that is quite enough nonsense, you mongrels,” Archer interjected viewing both Artoria and Rider now with the contempt that seemed so natural on his pale and glowing features, “And quite enough of this disgusting swill you dare to call wine.”

 

“This cask was among the very best I could find at the city market place this afternoon,” Rider said, looking down at the wine in thought.

 

“You are pitifully ignorant of true drink, of course you believe that, stupid mongrel,” Archer replied with a sigh before lifting his hand and opening a golden portal, a golden pitcher of red wine falling from his over turned hand and onto the stonework of the courtyard.

 

“Now behold, and acknowledge your folly,” he continued as he drew forth five cups from the golden rift, tossing one to each of them, “This is the beverage of a true king.”

 

Rider seemed entertained enough by this as he enthusiastically began to pour out the samples to each of them while Artoria merely looked upon the man with trepidation.

 

“Wait, Gilgamesh, if you had extradimensional wine this entire time, why did you drink Tosaka’s?” Assassin asked as she took her filled cup and sipped from it, then blinked and let out a whistle, “Damn, this is much better.”

 

“It is the duty of my vassal to honor my presence with suitable drink and lodgings, a task with he has failed at quite miserably,” Archer replied to the girl, and it wasn’t softer then how he looked at them but certainly his amusement seemed less sharp, before turning his attention back to Rider and Artoria.

 

“Magnificent!” Rider cried and even Artoria was taken aback by the sweetness of it and how light it was against her tongue.

 

“My treasure houses only the very finest of drinks and the finest of swords,” then, eyes turned toward Artoria, burning into hers, “This alone should indicate which among us is the greatest of kings.”

 

“Archer, your finest drink is indeed worthy of the finest vessel in all of history,” Rider said as he took another sip, granting Archer a rather bemused expression, “But the holy grail is not a drinking cup. First, we must hear what wish you would have the grail grant should you win it. The wish is what gives the grail its purpose.”

 

“You are not ruler here, mongrel,” Archer scoffed, “Already, you wantonly disregard the time-honored rules which dictate we fight for the grail. Besides all that, the grail already belongs to me, all of this world’s treasures without exception trace their origin to my treasure house.”

 

“Do they truly?” Rider’s master interjected with dark raised eyebrows and a rather amused glint in his eyes, “You’ve seen the grail for yourself then?”

 

“No,” Archer stated with alarming confidence, “Do not consider me as you would a lesser being, the amount of wealth in my treasury long ago surpassed my own knowledge, but that the holy grail is a treasure also means that it belongs to me. And any who would take it for themselves is naught but a filthy scoundrel and a common thief.”

 

It was no different than Caster’s insane blathering, apparently, Caster was not the only servant to have lost his wits between life and death.

 

“Would that I had a tenth of your ego,” Rider’s master scoffed as he took a sip of his own wine.

 

“Careful, mongrel, you yourself have not even the power of a servant. It is dangerous not to know your place.”

 

Assassin held up her hand, the other swirling her wine, “Wait a minute, before we get into all of this, we should probably figure out what the grail is and if any of us are worthy of it, or rather, if it is worthy of any of us.”

 

“For one thing, if it’s really the holy grail, then doesn’t it belong to Percival, Galahad, or at the very least Indiana Jones… or you, I guess, Gilgamesh?” Assassin asked, not truly bothering to explain who each of these men were or why they would be more deserving of the grail, “And more importantly, what exactly is an omnipotent wish granting device and why does it make me so nervous?”

 

“I thought that you did not seek the grail,” Artoria pointed out and the girl nodded, undisturbed by Artoria’s questioning.

 

“I don’t, and for good reason,” the girl then looked directly into Artoria’s eyes, “That power is dangerous, too dangerous. The universe is fragile enough as it is, add in omnipotent wish granting and we’re in for a world of trouble, no pun intended. The grail, in the wrong hands, might bring about the end of us all.”

 

She sighed, “I will likely survive it, and I’d place bets on Gilgamesh, but the rest of you…” she frowned as if dubious of this prospect, “I like the world, I like the trees and the sunsets and the oceans, and I would hate to see it go out with a bang or a whimper for something like this.”

 

She motioned to Archer quite brazenly, not even looking at the amused raise of his eyebrows at her casual address, “Gilgamesh’s wish is fine, because it’s not really a wish, just preventing the rest of us lowly bastards from stealing it, and I know Lenin has no real interest in it. But what about yours?”

 

Her eyes looked first to Rider, who, under the weight of her gaze along with Artoria’s, Archer’s, and Rider’s master, he took far too large of a drink and then flushed, muttering out uncharacteristically, “Reincarnation.”

 

“Reincarnation?!” Assassin cried out, “You’re using an omnipotent wish granting device, a god, for something like that?! Hell, I can do that!”

 

“Lily!” Rider’s master hissed out, miasma forming about him as he glared down upon her, but Assassin paid him no mind.

 

(And what a strange relationship those two had, as if they knew each other intimately, were trusted comrades and veterans of many battles but… But he was a living man, had Assassin been a childhood friend of his who had perished earlier?)

 

“What? It’s true!” she cried out before reassuring Rider, “Look, if that’s all you really want then I’m more than amenable to helping you out and getting you on your feet again. No need to go through all this potentially world shattering business for something like that.”

 

Rider’s master was hardly assuaged, “We do not offer…”

 

“I like him!” Assassin interjected, “And besides, he’ll probably be so busy conquering Russia that he won’t have time to bother with England for at least a few years. He’s no threat to you. And besides, it’s my godlike abilities and I can do what I want, I don’t need your permission, Lenin.”

 

Rider’s master went so far as to throw his cup of wine into Assassin’s face, which she caught easily in midair with mana alone, “That is not the point!”

 

“Lily, you must put your pet mongrel in his place, your lax rule has gone to his head,” Archer said before turning his attention to Rider, “And you, mongrel, you would dare challenge me for my treasure, for something so trivial?” Archer asked but Assassin answered before Rider could get a word in edgewise.

“No, no, he has clearly changed his mind, Alexander, when we’re done drinking and shit you and I will talk and we’ll figure something out. Jesus, reincarnation… That’s almost as bad Sirius Black breaking out of prison for fat ass Peter Pettigrew who was just as likely to die of a heart attack or a rat trap.”

 

“Thank you, Assassin, I shall… keep that in mind,” Rider said as he took a drink, clearly writing off her words as the lunacy they undoubtedly were, such a noble phantasm would be a ridiculous one to possess.

 

“All the same,” Archer said as he looked Rider in the eye, a smirk dancing on his lips, “I shall take great pleasure in killing you myself.”

 

Rider merely laughed and returned his own devilish grin to Archer, “You don’t have to remind me of the obvious, I have every intention of plundering your abundant storehouse until it’s been laid bare, so get ready.”

 

“And the peace talks were going so well,” Assassin said with a sigh before giving Rider’s master a rather hapless look, “Well, Lenin, the forecast says it’s going to be raining blood.”

 

Artoria for her own part paid this no mind, instead looking in outraged disbelief upon the unbridled arrogance and tyranny of both Rider and Archer, “That is hardly fitting of how a true king should behave.”

 

A king should not plunder, murder, steal and act solely out of greed. A king needed to be above such things, all base human desires, a king was a symbol, a divine untouchable being to lead forth her people towards God himself…

 

“Oh, well then, let us hear what you would ask of the grail, if you were to win it,” Rider challenged her.

 

For a moment she stared at them, and out of her eyes stared Britain, Britain in agony as she had left it, “I wish for my homeland’s salvation. With the omnipotent wish granting device, I shall avert Britain’s fate of destruction.”

 

For a moment there was silence, and then, condemnation came from the place where she least expected it, Rider’s master, “You are a fool.”

 

“How dare you, what would you know of…”

 

The man seemed to see no reason to respect her as a king or even a noble spirit, here, he a mage, sat amongst them as equals with nary an objection from Rider or Archer or even Assassin. Even now as he looked across at her there was contempt and perhaps even pity in his eyes.

 

“Lily and I are from modern Britain, and that alone should tell you that, in one form or another, Britain survives your own destruction. Conquered by France, conquered by Rome, conquering Ireland and Scotland, we have abided calamity time and again,” the man said motioning to the girl across from him, who now seemed unusually and dangerously still, “But more, you willingly set out to alter your own past, with an object you know nothing about save that someone told you that it is omnipotent. What sort of consequences do you imagine that will have?”

 

“That is why it takes a miracle. If the holy grail is truly omnipotent…”

 

The man cut her off, pale eyes burning like Merlin’s had so many years ago, “It will still demand blood and sacrifice, that is what magic is at its heart! That kind of power does not come cheap and it does not come easy and to underestimate it is to damn every one of us.”

 

“And how, exactly, will this wish of yours save Britain?” Assassin added, and her eyes, her eyes were like staring into a mirror there was such righteous determination inside of them, “Will it sacrifice France to do so? All of Scandinavia and the Viking scourge? And what of Shakespeare, Orwell, and all those British citizens who came after the destruction of your Britain? Do they have any real place in Camelot? Your time has passed, Arthur Pendragon, let it go.”

 

“If it is omnipotent then such a wish is not beyond reach! It is my duty as a king to…”

 

Then laughter, small chuckles from Archer seated beside her, looking as if… As if Artoria had just made his day.

 

“Um, Saber,” Rider started awkwardly, “Just so I am clear on this, it was back during your time that this country you call Britain was conquered and fell? When it was under your rule?”

 

“Correct, that is why I cannot allow it!”

 

“Allow it, she says,” Rider’s master scoffed, “As if you have ever had any true control over the fate of your kingdom.”

 

“And that is why I regret it!” she continued, ignoring the man, this man who had less honor even than Kiritsugu Emiya, “Why I want to alter that outcome! For it was I, and none other, who was to blame!”

 

Assassin grimaced and muttered as she took a sip of wine, “I don’t know, I always thought Morgan and Modred had a fair hand in it…”

 

Archer though, began to laugh far more heartily, with true genuine amusement, “You call yourself a king, and are praised by all as such, and yet you feel regret?! How can I not laugh at such nonsense?”

 

“Well, there are kings and then there are kings,” Assassin said motioning from Saber then to Gilgamesh, “Clearly, she has yet to look upon ye mighty and despair.”

 

“Enough,” Rider’s master said, but Archer was still in hysterics and seemed not inclined to stop, all the same the man pinned Artoria with his eyes, “You are an idiot, a bigger idiot than I even thought you were before all of this, and I will personally see to it that you will never obtain the grail.”

 

“You mean I will,” Assassin groused with a rather unamused expression before turning her clear and judgemental gaze to Artoria, “None the less, I agree with Lenin, I’m not going to let you go fucking around with the space time continuum just to make you feel less guilty.”

 

“Less guilty?!” she cried out as she stood, “My beloved country to which I devoted my whole life was destroyed! Why is my sadness about that strange?”

 

“Did you hear that drivel, Lily? Did you hear what this little girl who calls herself king of knights said?”

 

“Oh, believe me, Gilgamesh, I’m hearing it,” Assassin responded with a grimace, “And sadness is understandable, but life is suffering, anyone who pretends otherwise is trying to sell you something.”

 

“My suffering is irrelevant! For the prosperity of their country a true king should be willing to make any sacrifice!”

 

“I wouldn’t, haven’t even, though Britain’s demanded it of me on more than one occasion. I hadn’t realized, but you and I actually have a lot in common, Arthur Pendragon. I may not have pulled a sword from a stone but I did grab one out of a hat. However, I recognize the true nature of the world and don’t delude myself into being what Dumbledore tells me I am,” Assassin, for a moment, looked far older than she had any right to as she stared up into Artoria’s eyes, and in those eyes Artoria saw that final battlefield and all those slain beside her, “You’re certainly noble, but your nobility is a double-edged sword, and right now you’re in danger of cutting off your own hand versus any of ours. Through your valiance, you disregard all those who sacrificed themselves for you and your narrow-minded version of Britain, more, you spit on the graves of everyone who came after, from Winston Churchill to Godric Gryffindor.”

 

“Nobility,” Rider’s master added, “Is a sham, there is only power and those who are too afraid to acknowledge it for what it is.”

 

“You, who disregards any wish you could have made because of fear, have no room to talk,” Artoria said to the pair of them before her eyes landed upon Rider, “And you, you wish only for yourself and your own greed, you’re nothing more than a tyrant.”

 

“All kings are tyrants!” Rider cried out, “A king without greed is worse than a figurehead!”

 

Then, looking at her almost in pity, he continued, “Proud king of chivalry, the righteousness and ideals you espoused in life may have indeed saved your nation and her people, once. However, surely you must know what became of those who were saved by you, but then were left to fend for themselves.”

 

And there she was on the battlefield, in the twilight, staring over the dark-haired body of friend and fellow knight beneath her…

 

“You may have saved them, but you never led them!” Iskander, king of conquerors, tyrant, continued mercilessly, “You never showed them what a king should truly be! You abandoned your men when they lost their way, then alone and untroubled by that fact, you alone went on to follow your pretty little ideals to the end! Thus, you are no true king, you’re just a little girl.”

 

For too long of a moment there was silence, dreadful silence as she stared out into a sunset that was 1500 years old.

 

Then, the voice of a girl, “And you say I lack tact, wow, Alexander, I mean, I was thinking it but… You just went right out there and said it, didn’t you?”

 

Artoria looked down at the girl, looking at her with something like pity and holding Artoria’s own cup up to the king of knights, “Do you need a drink?”

 

And then, Archer’s laughter (how she was growing to despise that laughter), “What are you laughing at, Archer?”

 

“Oh, nothing, I just thought your anguished face was a rather lovely sight,” Archer said before adding, stifling his chuckles, “It was the face of the virgins who would shower me with flower petals in my bed.”

 

“Wait the what, they looked like that?” Assassin asked incredulously, her eyebrows raising to a height that should have been comical, “Did you stab their mothers before making them shower you with petals? That is not the expression you should want from your lovers, Gilgamesh. Or at least, not from what television tells me.”

 

“Well, you yourself have the face of a delightful virgin as well, Lily,” Archer said, “And are certainly no less welcome in my bed.”

 

Assassin blinked, blinked again, did not seem to realize Archer’s proposition and grave insult for what it was, “Thank you? I think?”

 

“She’s not interested,” Rider’s master interjected on the girl’s behalf, drawing Archer’s attention away from her and towards him.

 

“And is it your place, mongrel, to decide such things on her behalf? She is not even still a girl and yet here you are acting like her overprotective father,” a wild grin at the sheer rage that was on Rider’s master’s face at this insult.

 

“Hey,” Assassin interjected picking up the jug of wine and pouring into Rider’s master’s and Archer’s glasses, “We’re all getting off topic from the celebration of shish kabobbing serial killers and not stabbing each other to death. And well, the world peace discussion, which is kind of going down the drain. So why don’t we pour out some more divine booze and…”

 

Then, however, she stopped, eyes growing wide, wine spilling onto the pavement as she stood their frozen a blank look crossing her features.

 

“Lily?” Rider’s master asked, reaching out towards her, but Assassin did not move, and, as the man touched her, he was flung into the hedges by powerful mana which had begun to ooze off her.

 

Artoria drew her blade, readying herself, but the girl made no movement, rather the world itself seemed to move, seemed to crack at the seams and shift, great bursts of light could be seen in between thin air. And she saw… She saw the battlefield she had left behind, there at the end of everything, and she was there now just as she heard the grail’s call but she was also simultaneously in the present. There was a great wrenching pain inside of her, that could not be willed away by mere gritting of the teeth.

 

There was a great horrible cry coming somewhere from the ether, a call that was neither man’s nor woman’s, and then, just as all of reality seemed to falter, it stopped and they were back in the court yard, Assassin righting the golden pitcher of wine.

 

“It seems, my friends, that I have been given an order,” Assassin said slowly, staring out into space, still no expression on her face, “One that, in the present circumstances, it’s best I see through.”

 

“Oh, and what is your order?” Rider questioned, and for a moment she was perfectly still, then she said.

 

Then her head turning towards them, pinning Rider beneath her gaze, “To eliminate Rider, no matter the cost.”

 

“Tokiomi, what a shameful cur,” Gilgamesh uttered.

 

“I agree, but it seems that it can’t be helped,” the girl said before her eyes drifted towards Rider’s master, “At least, not without consequences.”

 

“I am sorry that we must face under such shameful circumstances, Assassin,” Rider said, “I know that you would not wish for this and I will try to be swift.”

 

The girl said nothing merely drew her sword from the scabbard across her back, and, with terrible position of an amateur swordsman, faced him with an almost inhuman determination in her eyes. A great wind began to grow as Iskander, king of conquerors, Rider stood ahead of Artoria and Archer and his own master.

 

“Saber, Archer, Assassin!” he cried out, his voice booming even above the wind, “Here is our banquet’s final question, does a king always stand alone?”

 

Yes, a king must always be alone, that was the price of kingship and for once Assassin seemed to agree.

 

“No, but gods do,” Assassin responded, prompting a grin from Rider.

 

“Then I suppose I shall show you how it is much better to be a mere king than a god.”

 

There was a bright light, the winds ceased, and suddenly they were in a desert, a reality marble seemingly without limit, and an endless army behind them. Rider called out to them even while addressing Artoria herself, “You see, Saber, these are my people, believing in all the glory I myself have embodied even here pledging themselves to me to do battle!”

 

Then, mounting himself on a great black horse and turning towards the lone girl standing opposite them with nothing but a sword, “I promise you, Assassin, Eleanor Lily Potter of England, Lily, and friend of Lenin, you shall have an honorable death and a place in my armies when you reach the other side.”

 

Rider summoned his vast, unquestioning, men forward towards the girl, and for a moment it was as if a tidal wave was crashing towards her. However, in that moment Artoria’s eyes drifted towards Rider’s master where he looked out at the girl with… with despair and resignation.

 

The girl threw her sword to the ground, lifted her hands, and the army… stopped, there was a great deafening silence about the land, and the girl, her red hair unbound, floating around her with the force of some unseen noble phantasm, and her eyes green and terrible, without even a twitch of her fingers, Rider’s head fell from his body and the desert shattered.

 

* * *

 

 

The world seemed… out of focus, not as if he had been drinking but rather as if he had been dreaming too long, as the world had been out of focus when the grail had called to him from Babylon as he lay upon his death bed.

 

He had seen, for a moment as he’d closed his eyes, he had seen the shores of Oceanus calling to him.

 

Slowly, too slowly, he opened his eyes and found himself staring, not at the clear blue skies of his desert, but instead the darkened night sky of Fuyuki.

 

“That was unnecessary, Lily.”

 

Iskander allowed his head to drift over and found himself staring at his companions, seated about the barrel of wine, looking as if nothing in the world had passed at all, yet all their expressions changed.

 

Saber, there was shock and dismay in her, her whole world tilted on itself as she refused to acknowledge the truth of Iskander’s words. What a retainer she would have been, kingship should never have been thrust upon her.

 

Or perhaps, perhaps that was no longer it, for she looked more shaken even than he had last seen her (though she had been positively quaking then). He had the feeling that there was some vital moment that he himself had missed.

 

Archer sat brooding, eyes trained on Assassin, not a word from him even as he glowed golden in the dark.

 

And then there were the other two, his own master, the man called Lenin, staring down in disapproval tinged with relief at the girl, and the girl looking back at him with the eyes of a man who had seen so very many battles and was resigned to seeing a thousand more.

 

“He deserves this, Lenin,” the girl responded, perhaps too evenly, “And it’s such a small thing, in Tosaka’s place, how could I possibly refuse?”

 

She then turned to Iskander, and was it strange that for someone who had made no claim to kingship, there was the look of a king in her eyes as she stared at him, “I’m sorry, your army is intact, if that means much to you. I had to follow through, but Kotomine said nothing about what to do with you afterwards. You have your wish, Alexander, go now and conquer all the peoples of the earth.”

 

“My…” he sat up, looked down at his hands, blinked and realized, “This… This is flesh and blood, there is no mana.”

 

“Yes, we can all thank Lily for her continual abuse of her godlike abilities,” Rider’s master cut in before Iskander could quite comprehend what she was saying and what she had said.

 

She stood then, stared up at the sky, and announced as if she were commenting on the weather, “I’m tired,” then turning to Rider’s own master, “I’m going back to the church, I have business with Kotomine, in the meantime, you two better make yourself scarce. Gilgamesh, put the fear of god into your master on my behalf, would you?”

 

Archer let out a small laugh and toasted to her, “Gladly, my avenging and terrible virgin.”

 

She did not seem to mind this but instead, finally turned her gaze to Saber, she looked down upon this girl without an ounce of human pity, and in a careful measured tone said, “And you, Arthur Pendragon, if you even attempt your wish I will slaughter you where you stand without an ounce of hesitation.”

 

Then picking up her sword from where she had driven it into the earth, she disappeared, leaving only the night air in her wake.

 

And Iskander, sitting up, staring at where she used to be, could only take a drink and state to his master, “Remind me to thank her later, when I figure out what just happened.”

 

“Thank her?” Lenin asked, before shaking his head, staring at the space she left behind blankly, “Oh no, they still have two command seals, and she has just shown her hand… Thanking, I think, is the opposite of what we should be doing.”

 

“Are you frightened, little man?” Archer asked, but Lenin did not respond, did not even deign to look at him.

 

Then he turned to Rider and with a strange insistence, “It’s time to leave, your discussion is over.”

 

And then they were off into the sky, leaving golden Archer still seated cross legged, and the stunned and terrified little girl that was Saber staring off as they made their ascent.

 

“To pretend that war and glory and kingship are anything but terrible,” Lenin said as he looked down upon the girl, “Is so terribly naïve.”


	4. Chapter 4

In the dark half lit stone basement of the church, Kirei turned from staring into the mouth of the gramophone, his secure means of communication with Tosaka from his own half-demolished estate, and found his gaze drifting to the shadows, where there, sitting at his desk as if she were sitting in a throne, was none other than Assassin herself.

 

She sat there, one pale leg draped over the arm rest, but eyes staring through him once again and burning, burning as they had never seemed to burn before.

 

Without a word or even a hint of effort he found himself summoned forward by sheer mana and into her awaiting hand. She held him there, dangling by his priest’s black collar, for a few tense and silent seconds.

 

And as he stared down into those glowing, inscrutable, green eyes of hers he couldn’t help but think what he and Tosaka had discussed only moments before.

 

She had won, against Gilgamesh the king of heroes, against Iskander the king of conquerors, she had won both times without revealing even her full capabilities. And more, she had fulfilled her command without seeming to fulfill it at all, Iskander and his master both escaping into the night. Either, she had found some loophole around the command, or else Rider had somehow died and been resurrected within his own reality marble into the form of a mortal man with his own mana, yet still with access to his noble phantasms.

 

Eleanor Lily Potter, Assassin, was a more dangerous player than Tokiomi had ever considered, and as far as his master had joyously decreed, the grail was as good as his.

 

But of course, Tokiomi Tosaka was not the man now dangling from his servant’s hand.

 

There was no thrill of fear, surprisingly, she might kill him, well he had two command seals one which demanded her death for the grail’s materialization, but none the less, he was not afraid as he stared down at this girl who at once seemed hardly human at all. Instead one who resembled one of those pagan gods he had so long written off as blasphemy.

 

And yet, there was something, that strange buzz, like the taste of forbidden champagne upon his lips, that same dancing towards the edge that he felt when he conversed with Archer over Tosaka’s wine. Speaking of joy and sin and their intertwining and the wishes that Kirei himself could not possibly guess, eyes glowing an eerie inhuman red in the half-light, the smile of the very devil upon his pale lips.

 

“You’re a priest, Kotomine,” the girl started, her tone almost conversational but her eyes anything but, her hand tightening around his collar, his golden crucifix glinting in the half-light, “Are you familiar with Ezekiel 25:17?”

 

How long, how long since he had truly studied scripture, as if his very soul had depended upon it (and perhaps it had, perhaps he had simply not been valient enough his effort). All the same the scripture was written upon his very soul, and so he simply replied, “Yes.”

 

It appeared to be a rhetorical question though, for the girl spoke, still in that calm and conversational tone, the dangerous tone of Gilgamesh and wine and the unwinding of Kirei Kotomine’s very soul, “The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the iniquities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he who in the name of cherish and good will shepherds the weak through the valley of darkness for he is truly his keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will know my name is the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon thee.”

 

Her other hand, not so fast that he could not see it, could not counteract it if he chose too with the knives of the eighth sacrament, struck across his cheekbones and sent him toppling to the floor to her feet.

 

“Don’t fuck with me, Kotomine,” her eyes, as they stared down upon him, lit from behind by lamplight, seeming red and green in the same instant, “You won’t survive it.”

 

He drew himself upwards, standing, and found himself laughing for reasons he himself could not quite understand. Except, perhaps, for the thought that this half-god of an English girl, something that no mage alive seemed to truly understand, cared more than Kotomine himself did.

 

The irony was almost delicious.

 

Then, standing from her seat, walking forward with curious grace for a girl who should still be in school, she stopped at his shoulder and looked up to stare him in the eyes, and dismissively command, “Keep your stupid asshole of a master in line.”

 

And just like that she was gone, Kirei left behind fingering the bruise on his cheek, and still laughing.

 

 

* * *

 

 

They congregated in the inexpensive hotel room that Lenin had acquired for them in the beginning, the broken barrel of wine between them, two glasses full upon the coffee table. However, Lenin did not seem in the mood for rejoicing as he stared ahead into the screen of the turned off television set, his clothes wrinkled and the hem of his dark leggings stained by the blood of children still.

 

Finally, after too long of a silence, a silence that had already lasted seemingly for hours as he and Lenin had departed Saber’s castle in a defeat that tasted instead of a draw or perhaps a pyrrhic victory without true loss, Iskander’s master spoke.

 

“Five years,” he said with a sigh, “All I ask is five years before you set your sight on my country.”

 

He waved a hand, closing his eyes in annoyance, not even truly looking at Iskander who was staring at him in stunned silence, “Invade Russia in winter, that should eat away at your time and numbers, then make your way west if you must. England is at the very end of a civil war that has been cold for a decade, it would be humiliating to all of us, to kick us while we’re in such a weakened state.”

 

“What on earth are you talking about?” Iskander asked finally, “You talk like I’m going somewhere.”

 

“You are going somewhere!” Lenin’s eyes whipped open, that insistent burning blue tearing into Iskander, raising his sealed hand to Iskander’s gaze, “You are done, king of conquerors! These command seals don’t belong to you anymore, you are no longer a servant, the war is over for you!”

 

And he did feel it, the lack of a tie between them, the lack of mana passing from master to servant, as well as a solidness in himself and his body that hadn’t been there before…

 

“And yet I am still here,” Iskander said, “Forgive me, but I was under the impression that such a thing wasn’t possible.”

 

Lenin barked out a harsh and rather humorless laugh, the only type that Iskander had ever heard from him, “Blame Lily, as usual, she’s at the root of any madness…”

 

Iskander considered this, considered Lenin’s unwavering faith in the girl’s prowess, and finally what he had seen of her himself, a strange contradiction of childish and ancient, yet curiously honorable despite her casual banter, “Is she truly capable of such things?”

 

“Now you understand,” Lenin said quietly, “Why I came from England, not for the grail, but for her.”

 

“Put like that it almost sounds romantic,” Iskander said with a laugh, and was rewarded with a small derisive smile from Lenin, but one that too quickly faded into something somber. As Iskander himself began to comprehend the stakes of the game they were playing.

 

“What will you do then, revolutionary?” Iskander asked.

 

“I cannot leave her under this man’s thumb, not when he has an inkling of what she’s really capable of, you go your own way, but I’m afraid I must stay in the game a while longer,” the man laughed at this and sipped at his wine, “What a thought, I once would have had such ambitions for this grail and here I am being dragged towards it kicking and screaming all the way… Still, there’s really no helping it.”

 

He raised his glass then to Iskander, “I suppose there is one benefit to Lily’s flagrant display of prowess under command seal, without a servant of my own, should I dispose of another master I can form a new contract. If I can get rid of Kirei Kotomine, then Lily can sign with me, and we can ride this out.”

 

“So, it seems you have benefited out of my…” Iskander trailed off, not quite sure how to say it, his temporary demise? Was that what he should call it, that final view of Oceanus that had haunted him for so very many years?

 

“In a sense,” Lenin said with a shrug and then an irritated sigh, “Of course, Kotomine before becoming an apprentice mage to Tosaka was a member of the eighth sacrament, such men are not to be trifled with, even with my abilities. He could very well match me in combat, especially with Lily under his will and no servant to distract her attention.”

 

“You fear this man?”

 

“Of course not,” Lenin reassured, “Caution is not the equivalent of fear, I am simply careful, and there are still paths I may yet take. I am far from done here.”

 

Iskander laughed, “Well said, my friend!”

 

“Friend?” Lenin asked with derisive eyebrows raised, “Don’t tell me we’re friends now.”

 

“But of course, we are,” Iskander said, whacking the man on the back and watching him almost topple forward into the table, “And know that, just as your woman has a place among the Ionian Hetairoi at the end, you do as well.”

 

“A place in your army?” Lenin asked, “Well, I’m quite flattered, however are you entirely sure you wouldn’t like a place in mine?”

 

Oh, what a thought, this thin, beardless man, standing with his own army against Iskander and somehow being capable of winning. More than his stature and intolerance for wine this was not a man to inspire thousands behind him, conniving he might be, and perhaps charismatic under some circumstances, but a king among kings, hardly.

 

“Oh, boy, your woman is more suited to kingship than you yourself are,” Iskander said between great peals of laughter.

 

“My woman? She’s hardly my woman…”

 

“Did you not cross mountains, oceans, and battlefields for her sake?” Iskander asked before leaning in close, “Is she not your Helen trapped on the far shores of Troy?”

 

The man grimaced and visibly shuddered, but Iskander laughed, the man might not see through himself but to Iskander, king of conquerors, he was plain as day. Surely, this was a tale of romance for the ages, of a man who wished to be king and his young love more than capable of it already.

 

“Please don’t twist my actions to fit your perverse storyline,” Lenin finally said, “Don’t you have a world to conquer?”

 

A world to conquer, yes, there was little to stop him now. With the Gordius Wheel he could be off, off to America to do battle with that man Clinton and then perhaps onto this Russia that Lenin so fervently suggested. Fuyuki was no longer a place for him and yet…

 

“Boy, you have no armies here, no men, and you cannot count this girl as your ally when she is servant to another,” Iskander said solemnly, “Do not let your pride get in the way of your sense. I am not a man without honor, you and I made a bargain for the grail, and I will not abandon you simply because I have gained my wish early.”

 

For a moment the man said nothing, there was only the whirring of the fan overhead, and the sound of cicadas outside. Then, quietly, as if a man confessing upon his death bed, without even looking Iskander in the eyes, he spoke.

 

“No one will be gaining the grail.”

 

“What?” Iskander asked.

 

“There is something that each master has kept from their servant, the true purpose of the command seals,” he looked up and his eyes were curiously cold, too cold, for a mortal man’s eyes, “To manifest, to gain the power to grant an omnipotent wish, the grail requires a sacrifice of seven noble spirits.”

 

He felt something cold wash through him, and he saw this battle as Lenin must see it, not a glorious battle for the grail but instead a drawn out sacrificial ceremony with the mages only eating themselves alive for the chance to claim the grail, their servants cast to the side and executed with little thought.

 

“Six can and will die in this battle, likely several wizards along with them, however, the seventh… Lily is incapable of dying, and thus, even when Kotomine uses that final command seal… No one will obtain the holy grail.”

 

And then, his words like soft daggers, “So you see, Iskander, if they realize what she’s capable of, what she is, then it is not a battle for the grail at all.”

 

“It’s a battle for her, for Helen,” Iskander finished for him.

 

“But that is not your battle, Iskander, Oceanus lies elsewhere,” Lenin said taking a final drink of wine, “Don’t stay.”

 

And unspoken was the thought that Lenin had never used a seal to force his will, likely had never planned to, he alone of the masters had no interest in the grail and no back dealings with other masters.

 

Perhaps, in his own strange way, he was the only mage in this battle with honor.

 

“I don’t like it,” Iskander finally said with a grim smile.

 

“You don’t have to like it,” Lenin spat back out, his pride flaring so brightly it almost was blinding. What an odd man, he had turned out to be.

 

“Five years then, we shall battle for your tiny island, and you shall become one of my retainers along with Assassin.”

 

“And I will hope you drink yourself to death first,” Lenin offered, turning away, his black clad shoulders the final silent goodbye he offered Iskander.

 

One final night then, in this strange city of Fuyuki, and then off to the East and America. Yes, one last night to honor those still living and the war still raging, and then Iskander would follow this final unsealed command from the man he once called master.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

“My, you’re quite the sight,” Gilgamesh smirked as he materialized in the basement of the church amidst the golden light of his own splendor, in his casual mortal garb with Tosaka’s cheap wine in hand, this time not confronting Lily but instead the mortal pawn Kirei Kotomine.

 

However, this Kirei Kotomine was worse for wear, quite the growing bruise on his face and a look of shaken disquiet on his face even as he wore the simple black robes of a priest.

 

A black sheep of a priest in black robes, Gilgamesh wondered, did it disguise him for what he was? Did Tosaka have an inkling of what this man was, did the man’s father? Or was it just Gilgamesh who had a clear view into this strange man’s soul.

 

“My servant and I had a… discussion,” he ended lamely, fingers lightly brushing the side of his face, a small frown on his face, his eyes still dulled like wine.

 

“A discussion,” Gilgamesh repeated almost with glee, “Quite the feisty one I imagine, she is such a wrathful thing when tested, and in such a small form.”

 

Yes, he had not expected that from her, she was normally such an odd twittering bird of smiles and delight. A strange little thing that had hopped upon the window of his palace, all golden and red plumage as she twittered upon his finger, pale marble limbs so thin and still growing into the woman she had yet to fully become.

 

A delight, yes, all the entertainment he had sought and more, but it wasn’t until she’d seen that blank look in her eyes as the world had twisted itself beneath her anger and frustrated desperation as she tore herself from Kirei Kotomine and the grail, and then the wrath of a god in her eyes, that he had truly seen beneath the veneer of the human woman-child that she wore so well.

 

In the desert, alone against the tidal wave of thunderous hooves and armored feet upon sand, resignation, fury, and despair all etched within her steady fingertips and flowing river of hair, she had been more beautiful than any cowering virgin in his bed.

 

Kirei smiled, a self-deprecating half twist of his lips, “Yes, she was displeased by Tosaka’s command.”

 

“Tosaka’s, no responsibility on your own part then,” Gilgamesh questioned, stirring the wine even as he stared across at Kirei, “Tell me, Kirei, are you disappointed that she is not dead?”

 

“What?”

 

Ah the offense, such an automatic reaction, a simple ripple on the surface of what he truly was, yet the easiest place to start chipping away at those silly priest’s robes he hid himself in.

 

“Had she died in battle with Rider, as you expected, then perhaps you would be free from being a master,” Gilgamesh said, and the man blinked, as if he hadn’t quite realized it, or had, but had not allowed himself to consider it, “Or, then again, perhaps not.”

 

“What are you getting at, Archer?”

 

Archer, Gilgamesh sneered, Lily had the right of it, though perhaps she was too casual in her address to call him by his mere class seemed belittling. Archer he may be in this grail war but he had once been far more than mere Archer.

 

“I tasked you with an assignment, some nights ago, to discover the motivations of the other masters concerning the grail.”

 

“Yes,” Kotomine said dully, a forced dullness, as if trying to force himself into being Tokiomi Tosaka of all things, “I remember.”

 

“Well, care to discuss your results thus far?” Gilgamesh prompted, waiting, watching for the first sign of slipping…

 

He spoke, first of Lancer’s master, a boring man of pedigree and ambition who wished for little more than recognition, a mongrel master to a mongrel servant. Caster’s master, a serial killer with no interest in the grail at all, and likely even no true knowledge of it. Rider’s master, a powerful mage from England whose motivations were a mystery but appeared to hold little ambition towards the grail itself, Kiritsugu Emiya, Saber’s master, a man of mystery whose motivations appeared to hold Kirei’s interest for all that he intentionally skipped over them.

 

But then there was Kariya Matou, a man of no import, no threat, one with no hope to his tale, yet a full story of classic tragedy to surround him that Kirei, with his dulled words, dutifully painted in a way that he had not bothered for the others.

 

Kariya Matou was proof of Kirei Kotomine’s joy, his raison d’être, that what the priest desired amongst all other things with the suffering of the mongrels around him.

 

The blood was in the water, the thought now, as Gilgamesh watched this man who could not even see himself, dared not, was did Gilgamesh bite. It gained him little, Lily was not easily disposed of and Gilgamesh had no desire to wait out this war without her to entertain him, he would still suffer Tosaka.

 

However, inside the wine, instead of his own reflection, he saw Lily standing alone, sword abandoned to the earth and hands raised, time itself warping around her as she looked upon the world and gloriously despaired…

 

And so, Gilgamesh, with a smile, opened his mouth, and pointed out Kirei Kotomine’s strange interest in Kariya Matou.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Lily sat upon the grassy banks of the Mion river, watching as the sun began to rise in the distance, the lights of Fuyuki still twinkling behind her even as she stared out towards the sea. It was beautiful, even here in this foreign country that Lily had barely gotten the chance to see, the world was still a beautiful place.

 

A breeze wound itself through her hair, lifting red strands away from her face, and on the wind, there was the smell of the sea.

 

And here she was in her Hogwarts uniform, a school she barely attended, if she had ever attended at all. True, she had been there physically, some of the time, but her heart had never really been in the place.

 

It was almost fitting, that she’d show up in a uniform she didn’t believe in, with a sword strapped to her back that she couldn’t use.

 

The scattering of light, like flower petals next to her, and there out of nothingness was Gilgamesh in all his gilded golden glory, sitting next to her upon the grass in silence. He seemed content in the silence, for whatever reason, smiling out at the river with an easier expression than she had ever seen on his face, not quite contentment but approaching it.

 

As if he was just now beginning to glimpse his peace with the world if not make it for himself.

 

For perhaps too long, she stared at him, and for a moment it struck her that his features were quite refined, not quite the Romanesque shape of Wizard Lenin’s pale features, but sculpted none the less with high cheekbones, a fine nose, and those almond shaped red eyes that burned so brightly against the pale gold of his hair and fair skin.

 

And that sitting here upon the shore of Japanese river, even had he been wearing his terrible snake pants and golden collar, he would have looked as inexplicably out of place as she herself did. More than simply Western and foreign, but something edging inhuman altogether.

 

Finally, she stared back to the river with a sigh, watching as the rays of the sun began to glitter against the water, “Did you talk with Tosaka?”

 

“One does not talk to Tokiomi, one talks at him, and hopes the mongrel wise enough to listen,” Gilgamesh returned blandly before giving her a rather wry smile, “Never the less, I endeavored to tell him the folly of his actions.”

 

Hopefully that would be enough, but Lily wasn’t sure, Kotomine well… He’d gotten it, she was sure he had, but he hadn’t cared. He hadn’t cared then if he lived or died or if Lily lived or died; there was nothing in him, not even the shadow of a man.

 

“Thanks, none the less,” Lily said.

 

“It was a small thing,” Gilgamesh dismissed, “Hardly deserving of gratitude.”

 

“I find myself with very few opportunities to be grateful,” Lily said instead, and this was, so very true. Even the small things, especially the small things, she could count on her hand the number of times that she had ever had cause to be genuinely and truly grateful.

 

“Gratitude on mongrels is wasted,” Gilgamesh scoffed, as if this was a simple fact of life, but then, perhaps it was. After all, in its own way, Great Britain was filled with what Gilgamesh might deem a mongrel and Lily herself an automaton. It was why there had been no question of her support for Wizard Lenin’s revolution, even in the beginning.

 

Wizard Lenin, she hoped he had gotten out of dodge quickly enough, she’d see him on the other side of this. Whenever this, whatever this really was, finally wrapped itself up.

 

“I am tired, Gilgamesh, of fighting these petty wars on the behalf of men who can’t even seem to understand what I really am,” she finally said, “For six years I did it as a school girl, Eleanor Lily Potter their messiah and villain in equal turn, star of their tabloid papers and their prophecies, and now I’m doing it here, and every time I step even slightly out of line… I am become Death, Destroyer of Worlds, but they’ve never really understood what that meant. And I will always be apart, always standing above or below or to the side or diagonally, I am not of them and they’re not of me. I will never belong to these people.”

 

Her eyes darkened as she stared out into the horizon and saw the ghost of Hogwarts standing over the river, “My life is completely empty of meaning, and these people won’t even let me accept that quietly.”

 

“I disagree,” he was smiling at her, almost grinning as he took in Lily’s upset expression and motioned between them with a golden gauntlet and then to the city of Fuyuki itself, “We, Lily, are the only ones who possess this meaning of yours. It is them, the mongrels and curs, who are irrelevancy incarnate.”

 

“Well,” Lily said lamely, her heart anywhere but in it, having long ago figured out the truth behind reality and its thoughtlessness, “That’s a nice thought.”

 

“Are you saying that our meeting is irrelevant?” Gilgamesh questioned, in amused glee, as if there was nowhere he’d rather be than sitting on this hill with a girl who might as well be a drop out of her magical academy, “That this is not kismet?”

 

Fate?

 

Lily didn’t really believe in fate, never had, but none the less there were certain events in her life, or rather certain meetings that she’d prefer not to be mere chance. Meeting Death in a train station, Wizard Lenin at every corner of her life and soul, and now Gilgamesh, king of heroes, in the city of Fuyuki in a war for the holy grail itself.

 

“Three thousand years,” Lily said to him, a smile unwillingly growing on her lips, “You’re right, we’re separated by three thousand years and more than a thousand miles, and yet here we are, with so much in common.”

 

The sun began to rise over the river, now fully in view, golden light painting the banks of the river and glass of the city windows, “You’re right, if that’s not fate, I don’t know what is.”

 

Too intense golden light next to her, and there was Gilgamesh, now standing in his mortal garb, snake pants and all, smiling down at her and reaching out to her with a single pale hand, “What do you say, Lily, that you and I have a superior banquet to the one last night, since we were in such poor company, and with such little time to drink that none felt the effects of my superior wine?”

 

“Hey, Lenin and I are great friends, and I actually like Iskander,” all the same, with a smile, she took his hand, surprisingly warm for how pale it was, and rose to her feet, “All the same, I’ll take you upon that offer… Although, I’ve never really been drunk before, it might get interesting.”

 

And then, as they began to teleport and the river began to fade, she asked, “Gilgamesh, how do you feel about those karaoke bars I’ve been seeing everywhere?”

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

_“What’s new pussycat? Whoa, whoa. What’s new pussycat? Whoa, whoa…”_

 

Gilgamesh did not know what cur was singing through the speaker of their secluded room, or what hellish tune he was singing, but surely there was no greater hell than this wretched melody which he was being subjected to.

 

Although the taste of divine wine, stored beyond the Gate of Babylon, gave it a somehow pleasurable edge, so that the flush of Lily’s cheeks and her own wild grin, and insistence of playing this song over and over made it somehow worth it so that he could grin with abandon back at her, perhaps having somehow drunk too much himself.

 

(Although, how such a thing was possible was beyond him, Gilgamesh was no child with his first sip of wine at the banquet, and even as a child he had always been otherworldly and superior to the mortal mongrels surrounding him. Drunkenness had seemed beyond him, however, perhaps in goading Lily to drink he had gone too far himself.

 

And strange, wasn’t it, how the world had seemed to tilt when her cheeks had gotten flushed, and when she had begun to truly drink. As if the world had grown drunk with her… But perhaps that was the nature of such things.)

 

Still, if he ever found this man… Tom Jones, he read from the menu of song choice, he would certainly take great joy in flaying him.

 

_“Pussycat, pussycat I’ve got flowers and lots of hours to spend with you…”_

 

Truly, Lily could not have chosen a worse drinking song if she had tried. Such actions seemed beyond her now as she slumped against Gilgamesh, or perhaps it was him slumping against her, the scent of her red hair caught in the air around him, a mix of the fragrance of wine, the old and ancient desert, of the flowers in spring and their sweet nectar, and something more undefinable than even that.

 

Either way, his own pale ungarnished fingers wound themselves in and out of red curls, a smile on his lips as he listened to Tom Jones and Lily herself drunkenly ranting overtop of his voice. A far more lovely and entertaining sound.

 

“Ugh, Gilgamesh, you have not lived until you’ve ruined Snape’s life and reputation,” she drunkenly slurred, lips pressed half against his collarbone, “I’m serious, I mean, the guy gets power trips from making eleven-year olds cry, I had to put him in his place.”

 

“Oh?” Gilgamesh asked, trying and failing not to slur himself, even as he chuckled against her hair, the wine adding more good humor than he’d felt in a long time, or perhaps it was simply her, “How did you manage that?”

 

“Well, first, first I… Hell, what did I…” she trailed off, slumped into him further before suddenly picking herself back up, “Oh, right, well, first so there’s giant cup we’re supposed to win or something for honor or glory or whatever.”

 

“The grail?”

 

She dismissed this vigorously, swatting it away but grazing her fingers accidentally against Gilgamesh’s face in the process, “No, not the grail, it’s not actually worth anything, it’s actually just a cup,”

 

He wasn’t sure he quite understood that, but he was also too drunk to truly care so he breathed out his agreement and murmured against her hair, “Alright, a worthless cup for mongrels, then,”

 

“Right, so there’s this worthless cup, and there’s points,” Lily said before pausing, reaching for the nearest goblet of wine (which was either Gilgamesh’s or Lily’s he had lost track of whose was whose), “And you can only get the points by winning quidditch or being smart and stuff in class…”

 

“What is a quidditch?” Gilgamesh asked, taking the goblet from her, and she barked out a laugh.

 

“Shit son, don’t get me started on quidditch,” Lily picked up the other goblet from the table, reaching over Gilgamesh’s lap to do it, hair brushing his abdomen as she grabbed it and returned to her original position, “I am not drunk enough to explain quidditch.”

 

“That sounds like a challenge,” Gilgamesh said with a flushed grin.

 

“Alright fine, so there’s these people, on brooms, flying brooms, and they have like three balls or something that they hurl into goals or at people… and then this other person on a broom sits there and looks for a tiny golden ball called the snitch and chases after it. Catching that wins the game, or something. You know, I was the snitch person, the sneaker, and a captain.”

 

She took a great gulp of wine, the red pouring into her already flushed cheeks, “Wasn’t very good at it, but hey, no team has ever lost as badly as Default, and I take great pride in that.”

 

“As you well should,” he said, setting down his own cup and instead lacing his fingers around her slight waist, so small, a testament perhaps to the fact that she had just exited adolescence.

 

“Right, what were we talking about?” she asked, leaning back into him.

 

He honestly couldn’t remember, and Tom Jones blaring in the background wasn’t helping matters either. Oh, if Enkidu could have seen him now, the laughter he would have had at Gilgamesh’s expense.

 

_“So go and powder your cute little pussycat nose!”_

 

Cat, was Lily like a cat? In some ways, perhaps, but he rather considered her a bird, a canary perched upon his finger or in this case curled in upon his lap… Although that was fairly catlike if he was thinking about it.

 

“Gilgamesh,” Lily chided drunkenly, fingers attempting to swat him again, this time tangling themselves his hair.

 

(His name on her lips, fingers tangling in his hair and his in hers, if they were not seated upon a couch in front of a screen but instead spread across bed sheets…)

 

“Gilgamesh,” she said again, with slightly more drunken exasperation and a petulantly drunk pout that startled him out of his own drunken envisionings.

 

“Snakes?”

 

“Oh, right, goddamn Snape,” Lily said, “So anyways, there’s this cup, and quidditch and points and shit, except you can lose points like the very devil, especially if you’re me.”

 

“Oh? These mongrels took your points?” He asked and then, slurring and leaning forward, almost knocking her from her perch, he pointed and said, “How dare these mongrels take your points! You should have, should have slaughtered them to the man… Heard the lamentation of their virginal daughters as you sacked their city.”

 

_“Pussycat, pussycat I love you, yes, I do! You and your pussycat nose!”_

 

Forget it, he was going to hunt down Tom Jones, wherever he might reside, and send his limbs across all four corners of the globe!

 

“Shh,” Lily said, a finger against his lips and laughter on hers as she clumsily leaned forward to impart a secret, “Oh, I did better, I destroyed that man.”

 

Suddenly Tom Jones was inconsequential, a mere mongrel along with all the rest.

 

Leaning against his face, so that she could whisper in his ear, she said, “So, first thing I do, is I lose an unbelievable amount of house points in like three days. I mean unheard of. Like, I would have had to kill someone to lose this many house points.”

 

“How did you manage that?”

 

She leaned back, held up a finger, the air suddenly cold where she had put space between them, “Professor Squirrel, that beautiful, stuttering, possessed, bastard.”

 

She amended this, swaying slightly and slurring, “Well, and Snape himself, he docked me like a bajillion or something just for showing up in his class and not laughing on cue. Which, seriously, you want me to laugh on cue then you’ve got to tell me the rules.”

 

“Cur,” Gilgamesh concluded, which Lily nodded to in sage agreement.

 

“Right, so, this gets the other kids in my house really mad. So, they decide to teach me a lesson, and I wipe the floor with them.” Lily cackled, “It was beautiful, and then, I auctioned their wands in the Great Hall, which is… well, pretty much sacrilege.”

 

_“What’s new pussycat? Whoa, whoa. What’s new pussycat? Whoa, whoa.”_

 

“I will kill that warbling mongrel of a bard if it is the last thing I do!” Gilgamesh said, slamming his hand down upon the table and spilling their wine from the goblets, which Lily dutifully, if with more difficulty than usual (the table now appearing to slide past them), returned the wine to its former position in the goblets.

 

“We should play a drinking game,” Lily declared, suddenly, or as sudden as one can be when stone dead drunk.

 

“Oh?” Gilgamesh asked, in a manner that was supposed to be intrigued but was probably a bit slurred to manage it properly.

 

“Right, we should… Shit, I don’t know any drinking games,” Lily paused, a moment of blank horror on her face, and then said, “Wait, no, two truths and a lie. I’ll go first, guess which is the lie.”

 

She straightened, looked him straight in the eye, chuckling slightly, “My biological father, wore glasses, and was a complete asshole. I was quidditch captain and sneaker. And I beat Hermione Granger in a spelling bee.”

 

“Well, you said the quidditch captain one,” Gilgamesh slurred out, rescuing their goblets as the room appeared to tip again, the furniture all sliding in one direction, “I’m not that drunk.”

 

“Goddammit!” she cried out in despair.

 

A smirk crept along his lips, “So, it’s between glasses and whatever a bee that spells is or a Hermione Granger… The glasses.”

 

She let out a cry of triumph, her eyes dancing as she produced, out of thin air, a picture of a red-headed woman and a dark-haired bespectacled young man, both who had a passing resemblance to Lily herself, “Oh ho, drink motherfucker! For behold, James Potter was a four-eyed nerd with coke bottle glasses!”

 

“Sons of whores!” Gilgamesh cursed, before tilting his head back and gulping down the wine in one go.

 

_“Pussycat, pussycat, you’re so thrilling and I’m so willing to care for you…”_

 

Alright, Gilgamesh needed to think, perhaps something from his past, long long ago and outside of his own epic. Tales of himself and Enkidu…

 

But no, not here, not in drunken revelry, let the past lie for a little while longer and the smile remain upon his and her face. And she was, still grinning, up at him, her eyes dancing with the wine and the game, fingers curled in the fabric of his shirt…

 

And all he could think as he stared at her was a single solitary truth that belonged solely to this present moment and whatever years fell after it, “When this grail war ends, you shall become my bride and the grail itself your dowry.”

 

“That’s only one…” Lily started but he interjected quickly.

 

“I am not in the mood for deceit,” he whispered against her hair.

 

Her smile drifted, she moved slightly back from him, sobriety beginning to dawn in her expression, “Are you serious?”

 

“The king of kings does not waste time with frivolities,” Gilgamesh said, “I meant it, when I said you were more than welcome in my bed, and in a seat beside my throne.”

 

His fingers threaded through her hair, and quietly, he continued, expanded upon this vision, “I considered marrying Saber, your Arthur Pendragon, as well, for her hopeless naivete, her determination and desperation, the shackles of mankind’s dreams that she bears upon herself would complement you and I nicely.”

 

Lily scoffed, “That’s a harem, not a marriage.”

 

Gilgamesh raised his own eyebrows in return, “A king may have as many virgin brides as he likes, you forget, Lily, my word is law upon this mortal realm.”

 

She seemed amused by this, giving a small hum of consideration, “That’s all well and good, but Lenin’s going to object to all that like nobody’s business, besides, not really sure if I’m the marrying type...”

 

She trailed off for a moment, considered this, her eyes blurred by both drink and past in equal measure, “I’m not sure if I’m even the dating type, period, I mean, I’ve only really tried once but… Oh Cedric Diggory, you boring, pretty, man… Our love was brief, non-existent, and covered in the newspaper every day for about six months.”

 

He turned her face towards his, stroking her cheekbones and staring with drunken amusement into her large green eyes, “You misunderstand, consider me in a way you would not some lesser being, my word is law upon this worth, if I say that we are wed then we already are.”

 

Perhaps, as he brought his lips against hers, he was too drunk to truly appreciate the moment, but none the less there was a pleasant light-headed tingle even as he brought himself back, staring at her stunned face even as one hand still stroked her cheeks.

 

“Your pants are terrible,” she suddenly blurted.

 

Gilgamesh blinked, blinked again, Tom Jones still ringing in his ears and pounding inside of his head.

 

_“So go and make up your cute little pussycat face!”_

 

“My pants?” Gilgamesh repeated, his muddled wits trying to connect what the modern term pants even stood for.

 

“I’m sorry I just… I had to say it, it’s been bothering me all week, you have the worst casual pants I’ve ever seen,” Lily continued, eyes now locked upon his leggings, which he suddenly realized she must have been talking about, “But your abs are fantastic.”

 

He wasn’t sure if this was a clever distracting stratagem on her part, to make Gilgamesh lose focus and interest, or if that thought really had struck her at that particular moment but either way he just found himself staring until an ungodly knocking sounded on the door.

 

“Excuse me, Potter party?”

 

Gilgamesh wasted no time in opening the Gate of Babylon and hurling a gleaming sword through the wood of the door, “You will not interrupt your king, mongrel!”

 

There was a shriek from the other side, the sound of footsteps as the mongrel fled, rightly, fearing for her own life and taking whatever cheap mortal swill she’d offer them. Then, curiously, there was the sound of no footsteps at all, as if the girl had disappeared entirely, into thin air as it were…

 

Or perhaps Gilgamesh was still ungodly drunk.

 

Lily sighed and wiped at her face, trying to gather her wits, “By George, I am drunk… Right, well, Gilgamesh, I think I’m flattered, like, really flattered, but the Cedric Diggory thing was a nationally documented disaster and I haven’t had any better luck since… Plus, really, if we get married that kind of means you’re marrying Lenin, we’re sort of a package deal, and I don’t think you want to marry Lenin.”

 

Then catching Gilgamesh’s dismissive look she added, “And don’t think it won’t be like that, you may have great abs, but Lenin and I… Lenin and I… It’s been ages, almost since the beginning, through squirrel and thin we’ve been stuck together... I mean, stuck with each other, both, I think. Point being, I don’t think you’re actually interested in getting into bed with Lenin… And he probably wouldn’t be interested in your bed either.”

 

He considered this even as he wrenched the sword from the door, throwing it back through the gate, and he offered her a cup of wine which she took with a complete lack of grace.

 

“Well, on the other hand, he does have frequent sex with Bellatrix, or I mean, he definitely did back in his revolutionary glory days,” Lily said, a look of annoyance crossing her face, “In fact, I’m pretty sure he still does, the bast… the mongrel!”

 

Gilgamesh was past talking at this point though, and he suspected Lily herself was too, though her mouth persisted in flapping. Instead, swaying back over to the couch and taking a seat next to her, he pulled his modern tunic over his head.

 

“…And I’m not getting any younger,” Lily added softly as Gilgamesh reached out and pulled her towards him.

 

Finally, concluding as her fingers laced themselves around his shoulders, “And if Lenin can have crack head booty in the form of Bellatrix LeStrange née Black, then I can have myself some Babylonian demigod.”

 

_“Pussycat, pussycat I love you, yes I do! You and your pussycat face!”_

 

And someday, after he had sobered and after the war was done and they were wed, he was going to slaughter Tom Jones.


	5. Chapter 5

Although Irisviel was already lying down within her healing runes, eyes closed and resting, as her strength dwindled and waned, Artoria could feel when she shuddered, “Saber, the wards, there’s an intruder…”

 

Artoria was already ready, modern wear abandoned for her battle armor and Excalibur cloaked in wind mana and held aloft for the unseen enemy, however her enemy in question leisurely strolled in the doorway, as if he was anything but an uninvited guest.

 

“Rider’s master,” Artoria declared, and he was, tall and thin, dressed in dark modern wear that was not all that different from what Iri had given to Artoria to wear in this modern age. He offered Artoria a brief, somewhat amused smile, one that would have been just as fitting on Archer’s smug face but then turned his attention to Irisviel.

 

For a moment, he simply stared as Iri forced herself to her her feet, watching her shaking limbs and determined red gaze with indifference, finally when Iri had fully righted herself he remarked, “You are not long for this world, Einzburn golem.”

 

Saber blocked his view of Iri, “What brings you here, and without your servant?”

 

“I no longer have a servant,” Rider’s master remarked, so very casually, as if they were discussing the weather, “You should know that just as well as anyone else, Saber.”

 

How could she not? She remembered the battle between Rider and Assassin, the banquet beforehand, and more Assassin’s belittling and terrifying display of prowess afterwards, bringing Rider back from God’s gates with not even a hint of exhausting herself of mana.

 

“You did not answer my question,” Artoria said instead, gripping Excalibur tighter, more than ready to bring it down upon this man’s head.

 

“There are things I need to discuss with your master, Kiritsugu Emiya, now that it appears we have similar interests,” this man did not seem at all phased by the wards that Saber knew Iri and her master had placed around them, more there was no sign of Maiya and the man did not seem at all concerned by her appearing, and as usual her master himself was missing in action.

 

“Do you ever put down that sword?” the man asked in exasperation, “Not everything can be solved by violence, you know.”

 

Artoria gritted her teeth and did not relent, “What could a man like you, with no honor or sense of shame, possibly want with my master now?”

 

“We share a common enemy,” he explained, eyes staring at the wind surrounding her blade with nothing more than casual interest, perhaps amusement, “And I am of the belief that an enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

 

“What enemy?” Artoria asked, surely, he did not mean Archer, who was the only enemy that Saber herself would call truly vile. Unless, of course, he spoke of Caster.

 

“Kirei Kotomine,” Irisviel answered for Artoria.

 

“Well done,” Rider’s master explained, “So, you’ve had your eye on him as well then.”

 

“Kiritsugu says that of all the masters, even you, he is the most dangerous,” Iri said, although her eyes did not once leave Rider’s master’s face.

 

“He’s not wrong,” the dark-haired man said with a nauseatingly pleasant smile, “Though perhaps not quite for the reasons he imagines. Under normal circumstances, I would dispose of him myself, but he is good at what he does and I am without a servant, without even getting into the nauseating fact that he has Assassin at his disposal. On the other hand, this is what Emiya does, and he is notoriously good at it.”

 

“So, you wish my master to play the role of an assassin,” Artoria sneered, although she was not truly surprised that a man like this would sink to these kinds of depths.

 

However, he just seemed rather amused by her statement, “Your master is an assassin, I am just asking that he get down to business and do his job already.”

 

“And what of you?” Irisviel asked, “What do you get out of this bargain?”

 

“The reassurance that someone won’t do something monstrously stupid,” the man said with a charming smile before reassuring, “I promise, I have absolutely no interest in the grail of yours.”  


“Yet my wish you object to,” Artoria stated before adding with her own sly smile, “My master’s wish is rather similar.”

 

“Your wish will damn us all,” he responded rather irately before sighing, “But that’s a battle for some other day, and if the priest survives then none of us will be touching the grail. You’ve said it yourself, he’s your most dangerous enemy, better to get him out of the way now and to deal with me as you see fit in the final throes of this grail war.”

 

He then looked past Artoria to Irisviel, eyes lingering over her, and said, as if Artoria wasn’t standing there at all, “I’m perfectly aware of who and what you are, Irisviel von Einzburn, and I know your fate just as well as you do. I also know that you and Kiritsugu have a daughter, one you left behind to the tender mercy of your creators.”

 

At seeing Iri cringe in fear, the man smirked, and Artoria gripped her sword all the tighter wishing that she lacked the chivalry that stayed her hand even against a crude low born man such as this one.

 

“If your husband fails, you know what will happen to her,” he continued and then, stepping forward, past Artoria and taking Irisviel’s hands into his, he looked up at her from a kneeling position as if he himself were a knight of Camelot, and said, “If you and Kiritsugu Emiya join forces with me, and work to eliminate Kirei Kotomine, then I promise when the war is done, if your husband should die or else be indisposed, I will retrieve your daughter Ilyasviel from the Einzburns and take her to England, and I will keep her from the fifth grail war.”

 

“Iri, don’t…” Artoria started but there was, there was such a sharp look of determination in Iri’s eyes then, even through her weak and deteriorating state. And suddenly it struck Artoria that the man had never said anything about Iri’s survival.

 

As if, they both knew that Iri was not going to survive the war.

 

But Iri nodded, tried to grasp his hands in her own, and said, “I promise, to help you eliminate Kirei Kotomine, get you in contact with Kiritsugu, and you protect Ilyasviel from this.”

 

He repeated his words from earlier, there was a great and shining light between their hands, one Artoria had to turn her head from, and then it was done, him still kneeling and staring up at her now with a small relieved smile and Iri with the same expression back.

 

How, how could someone like him make that kind of a promise? Why did this war and the people in it baffle Artoria at every turn? Everything had seemed so much simpler in England though intrigue and doubt had existed there at well. But good men did not wear the hearts of bad men and bad men did not have redeeming qualities to their souls, and her own nobility and selflessness as a king… Well, perhaps it had been questioned, and perhaps Artoria alone had been fool enough to be ignorant of it.

 

And though she did not know how or why, she had the sudden intuition that this had more than a little to do with the priest’s servant, “And what of Assassin?”

 

“She is your friend, is she not?”

 

And the man, the man promptly burst out laughing, as if Artoria had just made the liveliest and entertaining of jokes. Why was she always laughed at by these men? For once, could one of them take her words as they were intended?

 

“Friends, ah, well, I suppose we are though I’d hardly use that term,” the man said as he calmed himself down, standing, “She’ll be fine, I have faith in Lily.”

 

“Faith in an assassin?”

 

“Don’t you have faith in your own master?” he asked in return before, with an easier smile, stating, “Sometimes, Arthur Pendragon, even assassins can have honor, and if they lack honor, then they can be good.”

 

Before she could answer this, or dare to look at her own strained relationship with Kiritsugu Emiya, a man that she had in truth barely met, there was a disturbance in mana out towards the Mion River. Their heads each turned in the direction of the pulse.

 

“Well, that doesn’t bode well,” Rider’s master stated dully, he made to step out of the building, Iri and Artoria following him, when out of lightning and twilight Rider appeared on his chariot.

 

“Rider!” Artoria stated with a jolt, and she hadn’t sensed him at all, truly the man was no longer a servant…

 

Rider’s master too seemed more than shocked though as he pointed at the former servant and accused, “I thought I told you to…”

 

“Yes, well, I could hardly abandon a comrade in need,” Iskander, king of conquorers stated, and then with raised eyebrows, “Unless you truly would prefer to walk.”

 

Artoria spared a glance for Iri, who looked at her in turn, before they both looked back to the grinning Rider.

 

“Well, are you all just going to stand there?”

 

Grimacing, looking as if he was physically in pain, Rider’s master stiffly walked into the chariot, “I think I preferred when I had no friends.”

 

Rider let out a great booming laugh to this as he whacked his master across his shoulder blades, causing him to pitch forward and almost out of the cart itself, hesitantly, Excalibur still in hand Artoria then Iri followed them in.

“Well then, comrades, to the river?” Rider asked, looking back towards all of them.

 

“Just get on with it,” Rider’s master commanded, and with a whip of the reigns, the oxen were off, flying into the sky with lightning at their heels as they soared out towards the Mion River which flowed through the city of Fuyuki.

 

Where there, below them as they stepped out onto the banks, was none other than Caster standing upon the water, and then, a great monolithic leviathan standing in his stead, one far larger than any of the demonic legions Artoria had battled in the forest before.

 

“Well,” Rider’s master said as they stared up at the tentacle wielding behemoth in horror, “In the words of Lily, I think we may need a bigger boat.”

 

Running towards them also was Lancer, wielding both the golden short spear and the longer red as he stared out at the beast upon the river. Good, at least one ally that Artoria could depend upon to defeat Caster.

 

And then, out of nothingness with no indication, Assassin appeared, only her hair was greatly ruffled, her face flushed, her clothing wrinkled and not put on properly, and as she landed to the earth she staggered slightly.

 

On her was the unmistakable sent of wine and sweat.

 

“Holy shit,” she slurred as she pointed up to the beast, “I think… I think we’re gonna need a bigger boat.”

 

Then, drawing for her sword even as she staggered, she exclaimed drunkenly, “Well, shit, I’m ready for some Cthulhu realness…”

 

She trailed off then collapsed on the hillside, “As soon as I can walk in a straight line…”

 

“Lily,” Rider’s master said in what could only be unmitigated horror as he stared down upon her, “Are you drunk?”

 

“No, no, drunk is… Drunk is a strong word,” Assassin said, then lifting her head, or trying to lift it and putting it back down into the grass, she motioned instead to Lenin himself, “You’re drunk!”

 

“For god’s sake, Lily, that is…” Rider’s master sighed and placed his face into one hand as if he could not bare the sight of her, “For one thing, it’s unbelievably irresponsible, and for another, could you have possibly had worse timing?”

 

“Hey, I’m here, aren’t I?”

 

“Can you even stand up?” the answer to this, appeared to be know as Assassin tried to stand, only to fall straight down again.

 

“I’m…. I’m going to nap for a bit, tell me if you need me, or something,” Assassin then closed her eyes and appeared to drift to sleep, surrounded by enemy servants as well as Rider’s increasingly furious master.

 

“Well… I doubt she will be participating in the coming battle,” Rider exclaimed when they all had continued to stare dumbly at the girl for a few precious seconds while Caster’s behemoth stood in the water, “Hopefully, we will not need her aid.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

He felt colder now than he should, the space that she had so recently occupied for these past few hours, pressed against him, pale skin against pale skin, as they dozed off the wine, was now alarmingly empty. Her, his wife now, in all respects that truly mattered.

 

He had never had a wife.

 

Oh, there had been women, there had been many women. Daughters of his nobility, wives of his warriors, exotic girls of far off villages brought as sacrifice to Babylon, terrified, cowering virgin brides who trembled at the mere sound of his footsteps and shuddered at the sight of his indifferent lustful eyes upon their curved hips and breasts.

 

How some of them had looked up at him with such rageful loathing, cursing his name even as their fingers spread the petals of exotic flowers upon him, wishing death upon him tenfold as he took all they were for himself.

 

How their terror, their agony, their weeping and helplessness had amused him.

 

Those were the days before Enkidu had arrived from the wilderness, a barbarian prophet sent by the gods to curb Gilgamesh’s whims, and Gilgamesh’s greatest and only friend in this world. How the mountains had trembled and the oceans swelled upon his death…

 

Still, there had been many women, and Gilgamesh had, whispering into the ears, called them his desperate virgin brides, but they were not truly in any real sense of the word.

 

Saber, Lily’s Arthur Pendragon, resembled the fiercer ones, the ones who would claw and bite and hold themselves with pride, but perhaps she was more glorious even than that. For war, death, and kingship itself had not tainted her. She remained this golden glowing woman in the garb of a man, taking the ideals of humanity and thrusting them upon herself without any thought for her own agony…

 

But Lily was none of these things.

 

As Enkidu had been created by the gods in reaction to Gilgamesh, thrown and grown in the wild and tamed by a whore, so Lily too seemed to echo a part of Gilgamesh himself if in opposite youthful female form of a school girl virgin.

 

There was great, terrible, power within her, divine golden strength that could be tasted upon her lips and seen in the shadow her eyelashes cast upon her skin. Yet there was also a boundless joy and hopeful optimism, a great overpowering love of mankind and all his wondrous creations no matter how dull or mongrel-filled they seemed. She recognized the mundanity of the world she was thrust in, this modern age without kings or emperors, and she was resigned to it in some sense and yet it did not daunt her.

 

At once the fool and the sage, the virgin and the demigod, and now his wife.

 

What would Enkidu have said?

 

Oh, he would have laughed no doubt, drank wine and laughed so hard the droplets fell into his beard as he exclaimed that it served Gilgamesh right, that he too should be fated to be just as fool as the rest of mankind for a girl who hardly seemed to be a part of mankind at all.

 

And Gilgamesh would have been suitably unimpressed by this statement and perhaps have reminded Enkidu, though perhaps greater than most of the mongrels of this world, he too was woefully beneath Gilgamesh’s glory and had best watch his loose tongue.

 

Still, as her eyes had drifted shut, their legs still entangled and their clothes thrown about the room, he had thought even with wine blurred thoughts, that he wished she had been there three thousand years prior, so that Enkidu could have seen her and that she could have seen Babylon and Uruk as it once was.

 

Then, perhaps, as he and Enkidu had journeyed together she might have joined them, providing unwitting amusement as he was wont to do, either by attempting to attract the attention of pedophiles or accusing proud virgin daughters of producing incestuous bastards with their own sister, and perhaps she might have been able to stand against the punishment of the gods more easily than Gilgamesh had, and Enkidu might have lived longer yet.

 

And together, they would watch the sunrise against the ziggurats, the towers, and the high walls of Babylon.

 

Of course, then, hours later she had jolted awake with a pulse of mana, originating from the river. She had moved underneath him, summoning her uniform (one she said belonged to the warts of a pig, whatever that meant).

 

“Don’t,” he’d whispered into her ear, pinning her back down underneath him with an unclothed arm, “Stay.”

 

She had groaned, and for a moment had seemed tempted, but then moved to roll her stockings onto her feet and upwards, “Can’t, that felt bad… Could be Rabbit.”

 

He swatted her hands away from her feet, grabbed them with one of his own, as he repeated dully, “It could be Rabbit?”

 

“Rabbit is… Well, he’s not a thing, he’s an abomination from… not here, could eat Scotland, or Fuyuki,” Lily insisted, still flushed as she tried to sit upright even beneath Gilgamesh’s arms, and clearly still more than a little drunk.

 

There were many things he could question of this, and would, were he sober, but for now he just turned her face towards his, leaned forward and brushed her lips against hers, and whispered again, “Stay.”

 

“Rabbit eating things is bad,” Lily insisted, even as she looked at him eyes shining, “Very bad.”

 

He found himself growing slightly irritated as she now had summoned her underclothes and wriggled out from underneath him so that she could put them on, hiding her flesh from his view, “I find myself indifferent, let the mongrels be, Lily, you are hardly battle worthy.”

 

And she wasn’t, as she still staggered pulling her tunic overtop her head and then the outer-tunic over top of that one (what layers she had been forced into wearing, and with such little use to them, at least battle armor served a purpose, though it had always been so tedious to place on).

 

“Oh, I’ll be fine,” she insisted, rather poorly at that, then giving him a look, “You coming?”

 

He would have thought the answer would be written on his face, but all the same, he said it as shortly and concisely as he could, “No.”

 

And if she had any sense at all she wouldn’t either, but she had no sense, it was part of her charm he supposed, and also part of her aggravating nature as she disappeared into nothingness, likely teleporting herself to the river, leaving Gilgamesh alone on this mongrel’s couch in this mongrel’s room to clean up his own wine goblets and stare at his reflection on the black television screen.

 

He looked rather irate, which made sense, as he was.

 

There was a dull ache in his head and in his hand, Tokiomi Tosaka’s unanswered call ringing in his inner ear, and the wine still dulling his head. There was also the insult in and of itself, that his wife had left their wedding bed (dismal as it was), to go protect mongrels of all things while hopelessly drunk with no thought of all to staying even through the night.

 

Well, if it was night at all, looking out the window it appeared to be twilight (which, where had the hours gone, Gilgamesh could have sworn the day had not passed by so quickly, though Tom Jones had made it feel like it.)

 

On the one hand, his wife was being impudently innocently insulting again, and this was a habit while charming in its own right was equally infuriating, and Gilgamesh should best go about breaking it. Directed at him, at least, if she was thoughtlessly insulting mongrels, well now there was entertainment.

 

There was also the fact that Tokiomi no doubt expected his presence in some capacity…

 

On the other hand, his head hurt, he was in an unbelievably poor mood, he had no desire to put on his armor, and Tokiomi Tosaka was calling to him like he might a poorly trained dog to do his bidding.

 

“What a sight you are, my old friend,”

 

Gilgamesh turned his head, eyes widened, and there he was, standing with arms crossed across from Gilgamesh, grinning wildly as he had so often in life, skin glowing and golden and dark eyes burning with life.

 

“Enkidu?”

 

The vision of Enkidu barked out a laugh, “Who else?”

 

Gilgamesh’s eyes narrowed then, as he righted himself, “I, clearly, am too drunk. Begone, specter, I have no use for you.”

 

“Gilgamesh, my friend, always so dismissive,” Enkidu scoffed, leaning forward and inspecting him, “Love has left you in a sorry state.”

 

“Wine has left me in a sorry state,” Gilgamesh dismissed, indeed, though his wine was a wondrous thing and wine a wondrous thing in general, he thought that he might forgo it for some time after this misadventure.

 

“Wine, wine doesn’t do this to a man,” Enkidu dismissed in turn, before motioning to Gilgamesh, “Look at you, when has wine or woman ever done this to Gilgamesh, king of heroes?”

 

“There’s a first time for everything,” Gilgamesh responded blithely, but the vision of Enkidu hardly faltered at all, in fact seemed enthused by this response.

 

“And there, where is your waspish pride which stings any man who dares tread upon it?”

 

“You were never any simple mongrel,” Gilgamesh stated, “Though I may have mistaken you for one.”

 

“Yes, well, you had women on the mind,” Enkidu dismissed, no doubt thinking of that day that Gilgamesh had first met him, when he had stood in Gilgamesh’s way into a girl’s bridal chamber. Yes, Gilgamesh had hardly been pleased when this bearded barbarian mongrel had blocked his path.

 

“Strange though, that day you insisted upon battling me for right to a woman you cared nothing for. And yet this girl, your wife in any true respect, who is one in three thousand years, you simply let walk out the door,” Enkidu’s eyebrows raised, he stroked calloused fingers through his wild curling beard, and gave Gilgamesh a wordless look that questioned his very judgement.

 

“Know your place Enkidu…”

 

“And know yours, my king,” Enkidu interjected, “Husband you may be, one night a marriage does not make, no matter how pleasing. And she travels now to a man who has perhaps more claim than you.”

 

“A man?” Gilgamesh barked out a laugh, “What man could possibly…”

 

He trailed off, eyes widening, as he suddenly recalled the shine in her eyes when she’d spoken of Rider’s dark-haired mongrel of a master.

 

“You know which one,” Enkidu said, “And you know exactly where he’ll be.”

 

“That revolutionary upstart?” Gilgamesh asked, but Enkidu looked back in perfect seriousness, as if this was a threat that Gilgamesh should take more than seriously.

 

“If I were you, Gilgamesh, I’d start putting on my battle armor.”

 

Gilgamesh cursed, stood, still feeling the world tipping slightly, and summoned his armor then, turning to Enkidu, taking in his healthy visage, so terribly real in his drunken state, “I have missed you, my friend. I did not see you on the other side.”

 

“Perhaps we didn’t search far enough for each other?” Enkidu offered with a shrug, picking up a goblet of the wine and drinking some, “But how I have missed this wine.”

 

“Are you truly nothing more than a drunken vision?”

 

For a moment Enkidu just stared, a small, sad, and sympathetic smile on his lips, then a great shrug, “Who can say? The world, is such a strange and miraculous place, is it not? Gods take men, gods create men… In the words of your wife, it is hardly consistent.”

 

“I wish you could have met her,” Gilgamesh said, clasping Enkidu’s arm in his, marveling at the solidness of it.

 

“As do I, my friend,” Enkidu replied, grasping Gilgamesh’s arm in his, “It would take quite the woman to turn you into a fool.”

 

And before he was tempted to stay and reminisce, he gave Enkidu one final glance farewell, the healthy visage of him overwriting the pale pallor of his skin that had existed as he lay dying in Gilgamesh’s arms all those years ago.

 

And with that, in golden light he disappeared and answered Tokiomi Tosaka’s call, and found himself standing at the edge of the Mion River, not far from where he had found Lily staring into the sunrise earlier that very morning, only now he was staring into the face of a leviathan that wreaked of mana, waving about massive tenticals from the center of the river.

 

He regretted this already.

 

“My lord, where have you…”

 

“It is not your place to question my whereabouts, Tokiomi, do not forget your place,” Gilgamesh interjected even as the man visibly panicked. What a sight he was, so proud, in that dapper red suit of his with his bejeweled cane, and yet there he was with far less raw power than Rider’s mongrel of a master.

 

“Of course, forgive me, my king,” the man said with a bow, suitably deferent at the very least, perhaps his only virtue, “I did not mean to presume, but as you can see, the situation is dire.”

 

Gilgamesh’s glance was drawn towards the other bank of the river, where Saber danced across the water, striking at the regenerating sea beast only in horror to watch as it regrew limbs, Lancer stood upon the bank ready to throw his spear like a javelin into the creature’s heart, and surprisingly enough Rider took to the skies in his newly mortal form.

 

Strange, Gilgamesh would have suspected that mongrel to be long gone, but perhaps there was more still he wanted from Gilgamesh’s grail.

 

Lily though, he did not see in the fray, instead as his eyes wandered the banks he saw her passed out upon the grass, nearby the other masters, nearby Rider’s master…

 

“The other servants, as you can see, cannot stop the beast and should it make it to the shore and begin consuming humans it will have its own mana source.”

 

And he looked so… insistent, as he stared up at Gilgamesh, as if this alone would move Gilgamesh to action against this thing. There would be no glory in defeating it, in fact to touch alone was to stain any of his blades beyond redemption, the very sight of it was to make one ill.

 

“This is no concern of mine,” Gilgamesh stated, and he could see the dawning horror on Tokiomi Tosaka’s face, the grit of his teeth and the sweat pouring down his face, “Your Fuyuki is not a city within my realm and I care nothing for its destruction.”

 

“My lord, it is such a small thing for…”

 

And Gilgamesh had absolutely no patience for this babbling and groveling.

 

“Do not presume to be something you are not, Tokiomi, you are not my general, you are my vassal, that which supplies me form and mana upon this mortal plane. That is all that separates you from being a mongrel like any other,” then, eyes drifting towards the man’s sealed hand, one having been burned out for his earlier presumption, he offered the man a cruel smile, “Do not think I am ignorant of your reward for this battle.”

 

“My lord?” Tokimi started.

 

“If I participate in your battle, you gain another monstrous seal to command my powers, and I have no desire to reward you with such a thing,” Gilgamesh explained, adding silently in his own mind, that he found Tokiomi Tosaka far too lowly and tiresome for such a gift, a gift that he would not even have bestowed upon Enkidu.

 

And here, the man had thought himself clever enough to hide this detail from Gilgamesh, as if he were a fool to be played and Tokiomi a master of devious plots.

 

“If you wish my aid, well then, my master, you will have to push my hand,” Gilgamesh said with a glance towards his hand, “And of course, you would be the basest and most unworthy of mongrels were you to try such a thing.”

 

Left unsaid was the gruesome fate that awaited the basest and most unworthy of mongrels.

 

“Well, Tokiomi, do you dare?”

 

For a moment the man hesitated, hesitated in front of a still drunk Gilgamesh, but whatever foolish action he might have taken was lost to time, as both of them turned around to the sky seeming to break open, Lily standing alongside Saber, both of them holding aloft the king of knight’s golden sword.

 

And standing there, amidst that blinding human hope, borrowed from Arthur Pendragon and placed instead upon both of their thin shoulders, he wondered if he’d ever seen a woman more beautiful…

 

And, eyes glancing somehow past the light, into the dark, onto the other shore, where his eyes met Lenin’s, he wondered if that man had either, and if the vision of Enkidu’s warning had truly been more serious than even he’d intended.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

“I can’t believe you’re drunk,” Wizard Lenin, needless to say, was in a mood, still, at least Lily was now sober enough to sit up and listen to his words without wanting to fall straight back to sleep.

 

Maybe Gilgamesh had been onto something, it’d been warm in that karaoke room, and quiet enough once “What’s New Pussycat?” had finally stopped playing. The world, for a few hours, had seemed to stop spinning entirely.

 

Now she was sorer than she’d ever been in her life, her head was pounding, and she was sitting on the bank unbelievably cold.

 

Lily, was never going to drink again, or have sex… Well, the drinking hadn’t been so bad in the beginning, and the middle, and the sex hadn’t been bad either. Well, parts of it had been uncomfortable, but according to Gilgamesh’s drunk whispers against her ear, that was a normal virgin thing.

 

And he was a certifiable expert on bedding virgins.

 

Except now she wasn’t wrapped in his arms, dozing off, but instead sitting out here freezing, watching a giant squid kick the shit out of King Arthur, Alexander the Great, and whoever the hell Lancer was supposed to be.

 

Which probably wasn’t a good sign, but Wizard Lenin didn’t look panicked, instead irritated and angry beyond belief, barely sparing the giant regenerating squid any attention as he glared down at Lily.

 

Arthur’s strange looking master, the white-haired woman, wasn’t looking too hopeful though as she stared up at it in fearful silence.

 

“Why are you drunk?” given the look he was giving her, this wasn’t rhetorical, Lily wracked her brains, trying and failing to remember to earlier that morning. There had been light and the river, and Gilgamesh sitting beside her, the light twisting in his hair and then a hand reaching out towards her…

 

Something about fate, maybe.

 

“Well, Gilgamesh and I were sitting around, and I think we decided we wanted to see what this karaoke thing was about,” Lily said, “And then we went through his stores of wine, and he has a lot of wine and…”

 

“You went and got wasted with Gilgamesh in a karaoke bar,” not so much a bar, they had ended up in one of those private karaoke rooms at the very least, but still… Apparently, this was not an adequate explanation for Wizard Lenin.

 

“It seemed like a good idea at the time,” Lily hedged, but this apparently was a worse answer.

 

“Well, I’m glad it seemed like a good idea at the time. Still, at least no one can say you helped in any way taking down this… thing,” Wizard Lenin said, motioning to their giant squid friend, which had now just eaten an airplane.

 

“What? I can help,” Lily said, feeling more insulted now and suddenly sober, or, well, soberer, getting to her feet and glaring at Wizard Lenin who just raised a dark eyebrow back.

 

“No, and you won’t, you do not need to hand Kotomine another command seal on a silver platter,” Lenin stated, reminding Lily that yes, that was a thing, although he already had two so surely one more wasn’t worth much, especially if this thing really did make it to dry land and reenacted Godzilla.

 

“…We could summon Mothera,” Lily noted, which earned her an incredulous look from Wizard Lenin.

 

“You will do nothing,” he insisted instead, which was all well and good, but the heroic brigade wasn’t doing so well, and there wasn’t a chance in hell that Gilgamesh was going to come down and blow it up for them.

 

Plus, that would probably interfere with Wizard Lenin’s sensible plan of not handing unbelievable power to power hungry wizards.

 

Which left Lily instead frowning and thinking on the events of the earlier day, the karaoke place which had… well, looked the same before they’d entered it and when they’d left (reality had gotten fuzzy in the middle of all that drinking), and then stating, “You hung out with crack heads in the 70’s… You hang out with crack heads now, I can go drinking with Gilgamesh.”

 

“What?” Wizard Lenin asked distractedly.

 

“I’m just saying, that you have your own questionable hobbies, which I have never questioned,” Lily said, well, this was mostly true, she didn’t question it too heavily, “And you hang out with Severus Snape on a daily basis, which is just sad. Me drinking with Gilgamesh, even if it’s in a karaoke bar, is perfectly respectable.”

 

“What on earth do those things have to do with each other?” Wizard Lenin said, “And no, Lily, it is anything but respectable. It makes respect both of you far less, were that possible.”

 

“Well you should know I’ve questioned your judgement ever since I learned you regularly had and have sex with Bellatrix, crack head number one,” Lily blurted.

 

“What?” Wizard Lenin dumbly repeated, now turning to her completely, along with the white-haired woman.

 

“That’s right, I know,” Lily said, not that either of them tried to hide it, at all, especially Bellatrix who went out of her way to throw herself at Wizard Lenin.

 

“Is this really the time or place for this?” Wizard Lenin asked, before apparently deciding that yes, yes it was, “First off, she is not unattractive and when a woman throws herself at you without clothing on…”

 

“And I’m saying that if Gilgamesh and I…”

 

“Gilgamesh and you what, drink? That is not at all the same…” a look of horrible realization crossed his face, “You slept with him?”

 

“Slept with is a strong word,” Lily responded after a moment of silence, although, it really was the correct one. She had both literally and figuratively slept with him.

 

For a moment, he just stared at her, then throwing up his hands, asked, as if crying out in desperation to God himself, “Why?”

 

“He has great abs,” Lily said, although it was really more than this and have even been at the time, and added even as Wizard Lenin’s mouth opened, “And I’m not getting any younger, and it’s not like anyone else is throwing themselves at me, I mean remember Cedric Diggory?”

 

“Cedric Diggory?!” Wizard Lenin balked.

 

“Yeah, it was a disaster, a nationally published disaster,” Lily said, before adding, “And you slept with Bellatrix, you have no room to talk.”

 

“Those two things have nothing to do with each other!” Then breathing out, throwing his hands into the air, “I’m not dealing with this, I’m… And you’re sixteen, very young, you are not even legally of age! No, no, I do not have time for this now. We will talk later.”

 

“Well, good,” Lily concluded.

 

“Oh, Lily, it is anything but good,” Wizard Lenin said shaking his head, “I have no desire to be your father.”

 

Unspoken was Lily’s sleeping with Gilgamesh somehow made Wizard Lenin her father. But Lily wasn’t even going to touch that, nope, they were going to let it go and continue watch team hero lose against the giant monster…

 

“Why Gilgamesh? Don’t you know what he is?!”

 

A demigod and king clearly wasn’t the reponse Wizard Lenin was looking for, although it was the one Lily had to give.

 

“I like Gilgamesh, he and I are friends,” Lily said.

 

“Gilgamesh doesn’t have friends, Lily,” Wizard Lenin hissed, “He had Enkidu, and only Enkidu, and even then, the gods themselves fashioned and then destroyed that man just to curb his impulses…”

 

“I have few friends, Lenin,” Lily interjected, staring at him in the eye and watching as his anger dulled and he comprehended what she meant, “He and I aren’t so different from each other.”

 

“You are very different from one another, even if you share some similarities here and there,” Lenin whispered down at her, placing a hand on her head, “For one thing, you still have me.”

 

“And he doesn’t have me?” Lily asked.

 

“Well, in carnal capacities, clearly,” Wizard Lenin said with a sigh, “Honestly, I question your taste. In friends and now, apparently, lovers.”

 

Then taking his hand off her he added rather spitefully, “And honestly, Lily, what kind of a man takes advantage of a wasted sixteen-year-old school girl?”

 

Well, when he put it like that…

 

Lily however, was past the point of bickering with Wizard Lenin, and instead stared out to the river where the troops were starting to look very haggard.

 

“They really aren’t doing well,” Lily finally said.

 

“No, they’re not,” Wizard Lenin admitted with a sigh, raking his pale hand through dark curls, so different than Gilgamesh’s straight and almost gilded pale golden hair.

 

“I hope you weren’t too attached to Fuyuki,” Lily commented, to which Wizard Lenin said nothing, which probably meant he was either very attached or he wasn’t attached at all.

 

“Oh, hey, they’re coming back,” Lily commented, as indeed, Alexander the Great, Arthur, and Lancer returned from the field of battle to regroup around the rest of them, “Good work guys, you’re making… a real dent in it.”

 

“Our efforts are wasted against that thing,” Alexander responded with a haggard sigh, giving Wizard Lenin and then Lily a rather desperate look, “We must rethink our strategy, and quickly at that…”

 

Then, looking at them, almost in resigned embarrassment, he said, “My mana stores are not powerful enough to hold the beast at bay with the Ionian Hetairoi for long, and they cannot defeat this monstrosity.”

 

“And as a creature of dark magic I doubt any fiendfyre I strike against it will have a lasting effect,” Wizard Lenin muttered as he eyed it, “Not to mention I myself could end up destroying Fuyuki in its place.”

 

That was the trouble with uncontrollable fire, it had the tendency to be uncontrollable.

 

The other two servants just gritted their teeth, clearly having nothing overpowered and ridiculous to bring to the table, Arthur finally admitting, “If I had use of my left hand… Then Excalibur could defeat the beast but…”

 

She glanced down at her hand, then at Lancer before smiling and shaking her head, “It was an honorable loss, and it cannot be helped, I must fight with what I have and we shall find some way to defeat Caster’s monster.”

 

Lily glanced out at the beast then at the hidden Excalibur, “Well, it seems it can’t be helped, may I borrow this?”

 

Lily summoned Excalibur out of Arthur’s hands unwitting hands, immediately stepping away when she tried to take it back from Lily, “Thank you, much obliged, your majesty.”

 

“Lily, don’t you dare!” Lenin called after her but Lily just waved backwards to him.

 

“Too late, destroying evil monster with magical sword,” Lily called as she walked on top of the water, teleporting out of the way of whatever stray tentacles tried to hit her.

 

“Do you even know how to use it?!” Wizard Lenin cried after her, even over the sounds of King Arthur’s dismay, but, well, it couldn’t be that hard to figure out.

 

Lily lifted it, and… It did nothing, “Well, shit.”

 

She tried again, got nothing, and immediately had to dive out of the way of a tentacle.

 

“Come on magic sword, please…” the magic sword didn’t seem inclined to listen, probably because Lily was neither a lady in a lake or Arthur Pendragon.

 

She did not need this right now.

 

“Assassin!” Lily turned to catch sight of Arthur Pendragon rushing towards her on top of the water, doing a very good Jesus impersonation herself.

 

“Oh, right, how exactly does this thing work?” Lily asked sheepishly as the king reached her, teleporting them both out of the way of a tentacle.

 

“It will not work because it is not yours!” Arthur snapped, “Honestly, do you think?”

 

“Well, if you haven’t noticed, Arthur, we’re in some pretty dire straits at the moment,” Lily remarked as they dodged another tentacle.

 

“Nonetheless, theft will help nothing,” Arthur Pendragon remarked, hitting Lily across the back of the head before blinking, and stating, “You really are barely older than a girl…”

 

“Well, if you were going to use it, how would you do it?” Lily asked.

 

“It is not simply raising the sword to the heavens,” Arthur explained, “It is more, it is embodying the hope and light of God, all the hopes of mankind….”

 

Lily put her hands over top of the king’s, lifted the sword above their heads, and as she did so she looked skyward, towards the God that Arthur Pendragon had been so loyal to, and cried out, “I regret that I have but one life to give for my country!”

 

Light began to pool about their feet.

 

“What are you…”

 

The flecks of light, the hopes and dreams of the slain, lifted up and into the sword itself, the river around them glowing as if Lily and Arthur were in a field of stars.

 

“Good morning. In less than an hour, aircrafts from here will join others from around the world. And you will be launching the largest aerial battle in the history of mankind. “Mankind.” That word should have new meaning for all of us today. We can’t be consumed by our petty differences anymore. We will be united in our common interests. Perhaps it’s fate that today is the Fourth of July, and you will once again be fighting for our freedom…”

 

The sword seemed blinding now, growing hot in Lily’s ungloved and unarmored hand but Lily didn’t falter as she continued to cry out, Arthur Pendragon’s eyes growing more determined as she realized what was happening.

 

“Not from tyranny, oppression, or persecution…”

 

The purple fog coming from the monster seemed to dissipate, a great glowing beacon struck the sky from their sword, even as Lily continued to cry out, “But from annihilation! We are fighting for our right to live. To exist. And should we win the day, the Fourth of July will no longer be known as an American holiday, but as the day the world declared in one voice: ‘We will not go quietly into the night!’ We will not vanish without a fight! We’re going to live on! We’re going to survive! Today we celebrate our Independence Day!”

 

And as Lily finished her final word Arthur cried out into the darkness, light now overpowering around them, “Excalibur!”

 

And they brought down the sword together, striking through the heart of the monster, obliterating it under the force and will of all mankind.


	6. Chapter 6

A great golden pillar of light, summoned somehow not by Saber but by Saber and Assassin combined, Assassin serving as the missing left hand as they held up Excalibur and the hope of all mankind…

 

“Quite a sight, isn’t it?”

 

Kiritsugu turned, gun already out, and found himself facing perhaps the second most dangerous mage in the war, if he chose to be at any rate. Voldemort, dark lord of England, only recently having managed to resurrect himself with who knew what kind of black magic, in dark muggle clothing that resembled Kiritsugu’s, offered him a thin, polite, smile as he leaned against the edge of the bow.

 

“I’d bet you a fair sum of money that she just shouted out something like that speech from ‘Independence Day’, but the very real possibility of this is just too embarrassing,” he continued, completely indifferent to the gun pointed at his head, before pausing and offering a slyer smile to Kiritsugu.

 

“You’re a hard man to track down, even your wife had little to no idea where you were. It was luck alone that I happened to catch sight of your little vessel here.”

 

At the sound of the gun being cocked, the man did not even flinch, merely raised a thin dark eyebrow, a pale wand resting between his fingers as he observed Kiritsugu. There was an ease to him which most arrogant mages carried, an overwhelming sense of pride, but unlike Tokiomi Tosaka or even Kayneth El-Malloi Archibald, there was something rawer about this man, a sign that he had seen true battles between mages and had somehow outlived all of them.

 

Well, all but the one.

 

“Easy, Emiya, I mean no harm to you or yours,” he said, holding up the hand not holding the wand, “I’ve spoken to your wife, you can confirm with her later, but you have my unbreakable word to retrieve your daughter and keep her out of the fifth war should the war not end in your favor.”

 

Kiritsugu made no movement, did not even blink, just held his gun in front of him and watched this man’s face as he spoke so casually about Kiritsugu’s wife and daughter.

 

“In return, she has promised to help me dispose of an enemy we share, Kirei Kotomine.”

 

Kiritsugu lowered the gun, “Ah.”

 

“Ah indeed,” the man said, a smile growing on his lips at Kiritsugu’s reaction, and his hand relaxing ever so slightly against his wand.

 

“You’re here for an alliance, then,” Kiritsugu said, cutting to the chase, a gesture the Englishman seemed to appreciate.

 

“I have no interest in the grail, Emiya,” Voldemort said with a sigh, “Surprising as that may sound, but I have no use for it, and… officially at least, I currently have no servant. It’s Kirei Kotomine who concerns me, and you possess the servant and the abilities to defeat him in close combat.”

 

Would Saber last against Assassin? Artoria Pendragon was the strongest of the Saber class, undoubtedly, but Assassin was a wild card whose phantasms had grossly outperformed anyone’s expectations of her. A girl, who by all rights, should not even be involved in the grail war. In a battle between the two, Kiritsugu was uncertain who would win.

 

And then there was this man, he was nothing like what Kiritsugu would have expected. Mages typically did not admit their own weakness in battle, yet here was this criminally proud man bowing to his own pragmatism, or at least to Kiritsugu’s reputation as a mage killer. And using Kiritsugu as a means to his own mysterious ends.

 

Ends that surely, given his reputation, did not align with Kiritsugu’s.

 

“You forget about Lancer’s master,” Kiritsugu said.

 

“Archibald?” Voldemort asked dismissively, “Child’s play for someone with your expertise, in fact, I had thought you had already taken care of him.”

 

“There is Tosaka as well,” Kiritsugu added, “Who directs Kotomine’s actions in the war.”

 

“Tokiomi Tosaka is in over his head, and if he had any sense he’d have realized it by now,” Voldemort dismissed again, “With any luck Gilgamesh will kill him for us out of sheer aggravation. Either way, I myself, could handle him easily enough, as could you for that matter.”

 

Then, looking Kiritsugu in the eye, he said, “These are excuses, you know, for a man with your reputation, you’d think that you’d just agree with me and then stab me in the back later, if you didn’t trust me.”

 

“We aren’t our reputations,” Kiritsugu responded dully.

 

“No, we aren’t,” he agreed, “Is it me that concerns you, or is it Kotomine?”

 

Well, it seems they were going to be blunt with one another, lighting a cigarette Kiritsugu noted, “If I move in on Kotomine too quickly, and Assassin vanquishes Saber, then I will be finished even if he is removed from the war.”

 

“More, I have no reason to trust that you aren’t interested in the grail, and aren’t just using this as an opportunity to get rid of me and Kotomine,” he added, the brief spark of the fire adding light to the man’s pale face and his jagged grin.

“Oh, you do make me sound devious, don’t you?” he asked, and then, with that same smile, “I really do have no interest in it, you have my word on it, Emiya.”

 

“Why not?”

 

“Omnipotent wish granting devices make me nervous,” he said simply, and they let the silence linger for a moment before he asked, motioning to the river where Saber and Assassin now walked arm in arm back to the shore, “You truly mean to leave Kotomine until the end then? Even when he has power like that at his disposal.”

 

“Because he has power like that,” Kiritsugu finished for him, “Sometimes, in war, there are sacrifices that must be made.”

 

The man seemed hardly sympathetic, wiping this point away with a bark of laughter, “Oh, I’m perfectly aware of that, why do you think I agreed to raise your soon to be orphaned daughter? It’s not out of any love of children, I can tell you that much.”

 

An offer that Kiritsugu, frankly, had never asked for. But then, he had never considered losing this, he had sacrificed too many lives to lose this. The idea of dying on this battlefield, or returning home empty handed and leaving Ilya to her bleak future, it was inconceivable.

 

Not that this man’s future for her, raised in England by a dark mage, was much better.

 

“Then why offer, if you don’t even want the grail?”

 

“Because I like the world, Kiritsugu Emiya,” the man said with a sigh, clearly aggravated by Kiritsugu’s lack of cooperation, “And I’d like to see it standing after all of this, even if it means I must act as someone’s father, god help us all.” 

 

“And if I don’t want you acting as Ilya’s father?”

 

“Then do your best to live through this bloodbath,” he spat back, “Honestly, that’s meant to be a comfort to you, you of all people know what the Einzburn’s are capable of. Your wife was far more reasonable about all of this.”

 

“And I believe that getting rid of Kotomine sooner rather than later increases your odds,” Voldemort added, “But apparently, you don’t quite agree with me on that.”

 

“You didn’t say when he had to be eliminated, in your contract, or when we were supposed to work on this… You have no servant, I’ll deal with Kotomine before dealing with you.”

 

“Well,” Voldemort said dully, “Isn’t that reassuring?”

 

He held up his hands, “But fine, you handle Archibald and I’ll eliminate Tosaka, and if we act quickly enough we’ll still have time to come back together and deal with Kotomine before Matou even has a chance to sneeze (because surely, you’re not worried about him). Well, Emiya, does that sound like a reasonable plan of action?”

 

Then, a brief glance over the river, eyes lingering on the forms of the servants, on the form of Assassin, he added quietly, “With any luck you should expect me within the next day or so.”

 

Kiritsugu gave the man no response, but the man didn’t seem to really expect any, not as he stood, towering over Kiritsugu and gave him a rather contemptuous parting glance, as the air around him cracked and he disappeared, leaving only empty space as the boat rocked against the waves of the river, still rippling outward from the Caster’s demise.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Artoria and Assassin walked back to the shore, arm in arm, Excalibur once more cloaked in wind mana and safely in Artoria’s hand (the heart attack, when her own noble phantasm had been wrenched from her by mana and will alone, it had not been an enviable experience). It was not quite like walking back from battle with her fellow knights, it was a bit more surreal than that, as if her world had been uplifted and then set surely back again on its unstable feet.

 

For a moment, for that key instant, Assassin had been her left hand, holding Excalibur aloft, steady under the weight of the hopes and dreams of all those slain upon the battlefield. Artoria had looked into the girl’s wide green eyes and seen the light of that hope, and had known, that the girl perfectly understood.

 

Or at least, had understood for that single instant.

 

Now, walking back, the girl grinning and slouching forward like any common street urchin, she was wondering if she had just imagined it. Especially when she reflected on the girl’s strange words, which, while parts had spoken deeply to Artoria’s very soul, other parts had seemed completely irrelevant and nonsensical even.

 

The beast was gone though, she had wielded Excalibur even with her injured left hand, surely that in and of itself was a sign.

 

“You worry too much.”

 

Artoria looked down to her companion who was staring up at her with a somewhat amused look, “Come again?”

 

“You worry too much,” the girl repeated, “Even now, you’re walking here worrying about something. Relax, we defeated the giant squid, even with me being a little drunk, I’d say we did damn good work out here.”

 

“I am… I am trying to figure out how such a thing was possible,” Artoria explained before lifting her useless hand, displaying her twitching fingers for Assassin to see for herself, “My hand, you see, without both hands I cannot activate Excalibur.”

 

Assassin seemed unimpressed by this, and instead sighed and crossed her arms, “One can’t get caught up in those sort of inconsistent details, it’ll drive you mad. I mean, on a given day, the universe doesn’t make any sense at least five times.”

 

“But…”

 

“At least,” the girl interjected, “It’s better for your sanity if you just let it go and think about something else. Like how we saved Fuyuki from a giant squid monster.”

 

Artoria frowned, looked down at her weakened hand again, and she had wondered for a moment as they’d raised the sword together, if it hadn’t somehow miraculously been healed, if Excalibur itself hadn’t somehow healed it but…

 

But no, it was just as lame as ever.

 

“It isn’t inconsistent,” Artoria finally said, before looking the girl dead in the eyes, “You did it.”

 

Assassin blinked, blinked again, looked as if she wasn’t quite sure what to say before she responded blandly, “Well, yes.”

 

“What do you mean, ‘well, yes’?”

 

“I mean, well, yes, I did,” the girl repeated rather lamely and with extravagant hand gestures, “But you shouldn’t get caught up in someone else’s miraculous powers, especially mine, Lenin does that all the time and it causes him no small amount of heartache...”

 

“That was not the same noble phantasm you used against Rider,” Artoria continued, picturing the strange and terrifying events that had taken place in Rider’s reality marble within her mind, “And in your battle with Archer, I doubt you used the same technique as that. Just what is your noble phantasm, Assassin?”

 

“…That would be telling,” Assassin said, but judging by the expression her face, Artoria was willing to bet that Assassin had no idea either, that she likely had no idea what a noble phantasm even was.

 

For a moment, they walked in amiable silence, Artoria’s thoughts still consumed by Assassin and the threat she herself posed, when the girl suddenly asked, “So, if you get the grail, are you still going to try to rewrite England?”

 

“Save Britain, not rewrite it…”

 

“It’s the same thing,” Assassin interjected before Artoria could even finish her thought, “You know, many terrible things have happened in Britain’s history, but on the whole, I think we turned out alright.”

 

“You are not a king, you would not understand,” Artoria simply said, because that was it, that was the heart of the matter, this girl could say what she liked but she had never worn a crown upon her head and had never led her people into a failed battle. Of course, a normal citizen could never truly understand.

 

“Maybe not, but then, I’ve had to save Britain’s ass myself several times, or the magical version at least,” Lily said before shrugging and then with a sheepish look towards Artoria, “I’d just hate to have to kill you.”

 

What an odd and alarming girl, but then, anyone who was Assassin had to be odd and alarming. Just… she hadn’t quite expected this. Perhaps because of the unexpected nature she found herself smiling slyly back before responding.

 

“And I’d hate to have to die,” Artoria quipped back, starting at the girl’s disbelief, “What? I have some sense of humor.”

 

Although, Lancelot had always been quick to point out how terribly small it was.

 

It had been easier when she was younger, before she had pulled the sword from the stone and had simply been a bastard daughter of a murderous lord, when kingship had been thrust upon her… Well, a stoic and noble king was more respected than a boisterous one.

 

Even though Rider seemed like a blatant exception to this rule, but for whatever reason, Artoria bitterly thought that the man was an exception to many rules, no matter his own beliefs or the loyalty of his men even in death.

 

They could not all be wine guzzling, tyrannical, conquering, thieves even as they claimed to be deserving of kingship. (Although, she hated to admit it, even as she walked back towards the shore and spotted Rider grinning there and waving at them as they returned, that the man did possess no small amount of charisma.)

 

What was he still doing here? Was he waiting for his master, or former master, rather? And just what was the relationship between those two that Rider would come back for him, for Fuyuki, even after having obtained his wish…

 

Artoria’s eyes drifted and she stopped dead in her tracks, hand tightening around Excalibur.

 

“Archer,” she whispered, gritting her teeth, marking him as he watched them, standing next to Rider with that nauseating self-assurance and raised golden eyebrows. How she loathed that man, she had thought Rider disgusted her, but Rider at least possessed some warped brand of honor.

 

Archer, he possessed none at all, and though fair in face this disguised a soul so monstrous that Artoria could not even stand to contemplate the depths of it. His laughter, she was sure, would haunt her nightmares for eternity to come.

 

“Oh, hey, it’s Gilgamesh,” Assassin said before also stopping dead in her tracks, paling somewhat, “Oh, he looks… unhappy.”

 

Artoria looked down at Assassin then across at Archer, and indeed, the man looked… Slightly displeased, or at least, as far as Artoria could tell from this distance. He was glowing, if that was the word for it, slightly fiercer than usual and an unholy light seemed to crackle behind his eyes as he stared directly at Assassin, who offered him a limp wave in return.

 

“Maybe I shouldn’t have left him naked on the couch,” Assassin hedged with a somewhat awkward smile, “I’m really not in the mood for dodging swords…”

 

“You what?” Artoria cried, losing all sense of composure and nobility as she gaped down at Assassin.

 

“Well, he wasn’t moving, and there was a giant squid, and I mean, really, I didn’t have much choice,” Assassin tried and failed to explain, complete with pale hands moving this way and that even as Archer’s eyebrows lowered at their lack of approach.

 

“Why was that man naked on your furniture?!”

 

“Not my furniture,” Assassin corrected, as if this was the main point of Artoria’s outcry, “The karaoke joint’s furniture… And I don’t think he objected to the naked part.”

 

No, Artoria imagined he didn’t, not with the way he had stared so lecherously at Artoria’s own devastation during their impromptu banquet (and why was it that that appeared to be the first moment that Archer had recognized that she was a woman, and for that single moment, had lusted after her in the vilest manner possible), or even the way his eyes had drifted to Assassin.

 

No, it was Artoria, who wanted to wretch at that detail. Then, her eyes took in the girl, old enough to marry in Artoria’s day, surely, but all the same very young…

 

“Assassin, did he…” she trailed off, not sure how to put this into words, the horrible images dancing in her mind, “Did he force himself upon you?”

 

“What?” Assassin asked, completely bewildered, and then, appearing to clue in laughed joyously, “Oh, um, no, it was drunkenly mutual...”

 

At seeing Artoria’s horrified look she swiftly added, “He has great abs.”

 

“Why would you do that? Why would you gift your virginity onto a craven man like him?” how could she be so casual about the thought of his pale hands on her flesh and him leering over her naked and vulnerable body? How could she not despise such an idea?

 

“I feel like I’ve had this conversation already,” Assassin said slowly, now somewhat nonplussed by Artoria’s reaction, “Are you and Lenin secretly the same person?”

 

She sighed then, “Look, Gilgamesh and I have… a thing, a bond, a lot of things in common. There was alcohol, Tom Jones in the background, and he’s surprisingly romantic. I mean, when he’s not talking about making some sort of harem of virgins (which, by the way, don’t be surprised if he starts saying weird shit to you about marriage or something). We had… a moment.”

 

“A moment?!” Artoria cried out, “A moment is not reason enough for…”

 

“And the moment is gone, wonderful though it was, it was a moment, and now we need to walk towards a future moment because I’m pretty sure he can hurl a sword this far,” Assassin grabbed Artoria’s arm again and dragged her, unwillingly now, towards the shore and Archer who appeared to be in deep discussion with Rider of all things.

 

Or, Rider in a deep discussion with him, Archer appeared to be barely listening as he glared down at Assassin.

 

“Hey Gilgamesh, you missed the party, there was a giant squid,” Assassin said with her typical cheery grin, one which failed to amuse the man in the slightest.

 

“Oh, I did not miss it,” Archer said, lips twisting into a cruel smile, “I wouldn’t miss such a display for the world.”

 

“Oh, well then...” Assassin trailed off, continued to stare dumbly at Gilgamesh, and then grinned again, “You’re looking much better than I feel right now, uh…”

 

“Why do you waste your time on that mongrel of yours?” Archer interjected, and strange, that he hadn’t once looked at Artoria. Artoria glanced at Rider who offered her a hapless shrug as he watched the argument unfold with raised eyebrows.

 

“You’ll have to be more specific,” Assassin said, looking at just as much of a loss as the rest of them.

 

“Your revolutionary, Rider’s master, or former master from your actions,” Archer clarified, the clarification alone seeming to make him angrier, though Artoria had no idea why, not entirely sure what Rider’s master of all things had to do with this.

 

True, he and Assassin shared an unusual bond, clearly had history together but…

 

“Lenin? I… Waste time?” Assassin seemed floored, completely and utterly uncomprehending, but Archer did not seem to truly mind this.

 

“It’s unseemly and your actions reflect poorly on me,” Archer said, “You will cease and desist at once, or you’ll find your mongrel without a head.”

 

“… I think I’m confused,” Assassin declared before holding up her hands as she tried and failed to process this, and then with a sigh, gave up, “No, I’m still confused.”

 

“I will not tolerate your pet mongrels!”

 

“… Alright, no pet mongrels,” Assassin repeated, clearly with no idea what Archer meant at all, not that Artoria had any idea either. She inched away from Assassin and instead closer to Rider, giving him an alarmed look.

 

“Don’t ask me, Saber,” the man whispered down towards her, “I am just as lost as you are.”

 

Archer, after a moment of glaring down at her then sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose with one hand, finally, softer, he said, “Forgive me, dealing with Tokiomi has left me… In ill humor.”

 

“Oh, yes, he’s terrible…” Lily said and then frowned, “And I just got him another command seal for Kotomine, goddammit.”

 

They then stared at each other for a silent moment that lasted far too long, Archer looking at a complete loss for words, and then, by God, was the man blushing? It was hard to tell with the unnatural pale golden glow that seemed to constantly surround the man, but there was a distinct red growing across his cheeks.

 

“Oh, oh ho,” Rider said, and then, broke out into booming laughter, even while Artoria watched in horror and Assassin in confusion.

 

Archer sent a glare that could kill men towards Rider, but the king of conquerors paid no mind, still laughing mindlessly, even as Artoria tried and failed to come to grips with what she was seeing, what she surely was mistaken in seeing.

 

This… This had not been there the other day, but no, hints of it had already. Hadn’t he laughed unusually heartily at Assassin’s utter humiliation of Artoria? Of course, it was because it was Artoria’s humiliation, and he was the kind to find pain not only humorous but alluring…

 

But then, no, there had been something different in how he looked at Assassin then and certainly in how he was looking at her now. Not as if he had never seen her before, but as if he now could only truly see her, but had no idea what to make of her or how to approach her…

 

And Assassin herself seemed completely oblivious.

 

“Right… Well, thank you for your undying support, Gilgamesh, and uh, good luck with Tosaka,” Assassin said, which appeared to shake Archer from some of his stupor at least, as he dumbly reached out and took her hands in his, shaking it slightly.

 

“Yes, it was… not a waste of my time,” he finished rather lamely, met by Assassin’s increasingly strained smile as she appeared to be more and more confused by the situation.

 

“Good,” Assassin said even as she extracted her hand with a smile, “That’s good, well then… I need to sleep, I’ll see you all later.”

 

And with that, the girl disappeared, leaving Archer, Artoria, and Rider in her wake. Both Rider and Artoria turned to stare at the king of heroes, Artoria in shocked dismay, and Rider with some sort of manic glee.

 

“So, Archer, you do realize you have your work cut out for you, don’t you?” he asked, “And I’m sure I don’t need to tell you, that killing a little girl’s only friend, a man who has crossed oceans, rivers, mountains, and battlefield for her alone, is not the means to her heart.”

 

“It is through the small modicum of respect I have for your abilities that you are still standing, mongrel, do not try my patience,” Archer spat, and oh God, he was still flushing like a page boy, and Artoria herself was gaping like a fool at the sight of him.

 

“Calm, Archer, I just felt that I should point out that if you do cut off Lenin’s head, she probably won’t thank you for it,” Rider said before stating, “If I were you, I’d get her some nice flowers and maybe some chocolate.” 

 

“I do not need your advice!”

 

And with that, Archer himself was gone in a flash of lightning itself, golden sparks crackling even as he disappeared, far different from the leisurely petals of light he usually appeared and disappeared in.

 

“Now there is a man who is completely and utterly hopeless,” Rider stated as they both continued to stare at the spot where he had vanished, “And perhaps divine retribution at work, for surely, if any man deserves to be a fool, it is him.”

 

“Is that what we just witnessed?” Artoria asked, not entirely sure herself, just feeling sort of nauseatingly numb at all of this, and perhaps a bit relieved that the man had not even glanced once in her direction.

 

“I’d wish him luck,” Rider continued, stroking his beard, “But honestly, I’d find some humiliation for that man refreshing. That, and, I believe I’m on ‘Team Lenin”

 

“There are teams?” Artoria asked in disbelief.

 

“But of course, why wouldn’t there be?” he let out a boisterous laugh, raking a hand through thick red hair, “Oh, I believe I’ll have to delay my conquest a while longer, it seems my revolutionary friend may need my help after all. For surely, if the king of heroes were to win this battle, then there is no hope for us common fools at all.”

 

And though it might be blasphemy for her to wish such a thing, if only because it would mean the defeat of the king of heroes in some respect, she hoped Rider’s former master was victorious as well…

 

Of course, it was all moot point as she would have to slay Archer herself to end this grail war. Focusing on romance, at a time like this, surely was a sign of folly and distraction.

 

 

* * *

 

 

There was a burning sensation in the pit of his stomach, one which had clawed itself onto his face and lingered there like a kind of horrific rash, the kind seen on lepers and diseased mongrels. He had the horrible intuition, as he had retreated to Tokiomi’s estate (still half demolished and constantly leaking) and stared out the window, that this was the feeling known as humiliation.

 

He’d never felt it, Enkidu had told him often enough that he should feel shame, sometimes in jest, and sometimes in perfect seriousness, but he’d never felt that either. Humiliation was a type of a shame, a shallower more pressing form of it, and oh if this was shame then how Gilgamesh loathed it.

 

He’d stood there and he’d looked at her and he’d…

 

He’d frozen completely, he’d felt horribly sober and vulnerable and the words had vanished, and all he could think was that she was staring up at him waiting for him to say something witty or clever or even cruel and he’d…

 

There’d been nothing to say.

 

He had not even told her that she had been beautiful out there upon the water, light streaming upwards from her hand in Saber’s, or admonished her for leaving their… well, he could hardly call it a wedding chamber, honestly, he was a bit humiliated by all of that as well.

 

And now, now he just had these images in his head of those past few moments, staring at the shadows under her eyes and her bright smile, and how he’d ruined it and all he wanted to do was chop off that mongrel’s head except…

 

Except there shouldn’t be any hesitation, the mongrel had to go, clearly, he was a distraction and a slight against Gilgamesh himself. Gilgamesh had never hesitated before, even when it was a woman he had no real interest in, no real need for but instead a passing fancy.

 

Except that was the difference, this girl wasn’t a mere passing fancy, this was his wife, and he would not be walking into her life and then strolling out of it once again leaving her sobbing at the foot of his bed. More, he had no desire to leave her in such a state, strange as that seemed to him… And Rider, mongrel that he was, had a point, if this man, loathsome as the thought might be, if this man was Lily’s Enkidu… She’d never forgive him, as Gilgamesh had never truly forgiven the gods who had blighted him or himself for allowing it.

 

Not to mention, she had resurrected Rider once before, certainly she would expend any amount of mana to resurrect this… Lenin of hers.

 

Oh, but how he wanted to paint of Fuyuki in that brazen mongrel’s blood.

 

He had never questioned his own judgement, not even with Enkidu’s arrival, but as stood there now staring out into the warded courtyard and at his own pale reflection, he wished that there were some reliable being outside of himself who perhaps might tell him what to do.

 

Enkidu, perhaps, but then, he had never had a wife, too busy venturing with Gilgamesh and then dying…

 

All the same, at least he could have asked Enkidu, who while lacking experience, perhaps might have seen an angle that Gilgamesh had not considered. Gilgamesh was not in practice of wooing and winning women, there had never been a need…

 

Gilgamesh looked up through the window, focused, the wards, for a small almost infinitesimal second, flickered…

 

Gilgamesh turned from the window, looked over his shoulder and down the ornate corridor to the oak doors of Tokiomi’s office, where the man was currently seated with a cup of tea, no doubt deliberating over what to do with Gilgamesh or even with Lily.

 

Then, oh yes, there it was, Rider’s great bellowing cry along with lightning as his oxen took to the skies outside the estate. And the buzzing in his head, Tokiomi likely ordering Gilgamesh to deal with the rogue former servant quickly leaving him secure in the estate, or, well, so he believed.

 

Gilgamesh, instead, stood, crossed his arms, and waited.

 

And there he appeared, dressed as a black bird, stepping through the front door way and closing it softly behind him, treading on light feet as he, assassin like, made his way towards Tokiomi Tosaka’s office with pale mage’s wand clasped in his hand.

 

Stopping dead, of course, when he spotted Gilgamesh who, with only a cruel smile, silently opened the Gate of Babylon behind him.

 

How Tokiomi did not notice this was no small wonder, but none the less, there was no outcry from his master, instead that dull insistence that he take care of Rider, who was now beginning to attack the wards with great joyous glee by the sound of it.

 

The man’s eyes narrowed, and with a silent swish of his wand, cast some dampening field over the hallway, and then spoke, “Surely, Archer, you don’t mean to prevent Tokiomi Tosaka’s untimely death.”

 

“I am reliant on him for access to this physical world, for now,” Gilgamesh responded, “As such, though I find him dull and insulting, I must put up with him.”

 

And more, Gilgamesh would dearly love the opportunity to destroy this mongrel before him, it would be so easy, just one fell sword, defending his master’s life and thus Gilgamesh’s existence, an action surely even Lily would understand…

 

A sword flew towards the man, wordlessly blocked by the man’s mana and sent veering off course and into a portrait of Tokiomi’s darling wife and daughters, striking his wife in the face.

 

Gilgamesh offered the man a thin, displeased, smile.

 

“Has Lily told you the good news?”

 

This, seemed to stop him, stopped him dead in his tracks, his pale blue eyes widening and his features slackening, a look of fear, trepidation, and wariness crossing him all at once. And for a moment, a clear moment, Gilgamesh realized that this man cared quite a bit, perhaps had not even admitted to himself, but he cared perhaps as much as Gilgamesh himself now did.

 

“No,” the man finally said and then, eyebrows lowering and a sneer growing on his face, “I’m afraid Lily and I haven’t had as much quality time together as I would have liked. Unless, of course, you mean your drunken revelry and then seduction of a wasted sixteen-year-old girl. Because yes, Gilgamesh, I heard about that.”

 

Gilgamesh did not even bother to hesitate as he sent a barrage of swords towards the man, several blocked and one grazing his fine cheekbones, a thin line of blood trickling down the side of his jaw.

 

“Congratulations, brother,” Gilgamesh said, practically spitting out the last word, “For Lily and I are married.”

 

“Married?” the man sneered, before barking out an incredulous laugh laugh, “Is that what you believe? Do you think someone like Lily even understands what a concept like marriage means? And do you think that you’ll survive the war to find out?”

 

“It is not merely what I believe, but what is, for I am not like one of your mongrel comrades, you forget that my word is that of a god’s upon this earth, and by my will alone we are already wed,” Gilgamesh said, and then, seeing the man’s amusement, added, “Besides, she seemed to enjoy it at the time.”

 

Gilgamesh must have truly touched a nerve for the man sent a bolt of red lightning out towards Gilgamesh, which Gilgamesh promptly blocked with a sword from the gate, reflecting it back towards Lenin.

 

“You are not bad, for a mongrel, and were I more distractible and invested surely I would find your gambit with Rider worthier of my attention,” Gilgamesh sneered, “I assume he is to be your getaway driver, brother?”

 

He was making quick work of the wards, the buzzing of Tokiomi’s call now near panic, soon no doubt he’d call upon Kirei Kotomine and send Lily out into the fray, since he dared not try Gilgamesh’s patience further.

 

A wise thought, had he not already tried Gilgamesh’s patience past its breaking point.

 

Then, still cross armed and surveying this thin, tall, proud man of Lily’s, “Or is it father? You see, I’m somewhat confused by your pseudo relation to my wife.”

 

Oh, that did it, he could see the rage practically pouring off the man, but he was cleverer than that, instead his wand lowered and his eyes flickered to the doorway and then back to Gilgamesh. And staring at him, as he stood proud as any king, Gilgamesh thought that he could perhaps see whatever fire Lily saw within him, that perhaps by his wife’s grace and attention alone, this proud and brazen mongrel Lenin was almost worthy of his humanity.

 

Finally, shoving his pride down into the very depths of his soul, the man bit out, “I, as you know, have no servant.”  


“Rider seems eager as ever,” Gilgamesh drily noted.

 

“Rider, for whatever inconceivable reason, has volunteered for my cause,” Lenin spat in response, “But the command seals I wear no longer belong to him.”

 

Then, daring to gaze directly into Gilgamesh’s eyes, his own a burning and almost indescribably pale blue, he said, “When Tokiomi Tosaka dies, you will no longer have a master, and will no longer have a supply of magic for your physical form. A pity, since you are a newly wed.”

 

Then, raising his sealed hand upwards so that it fell in Gilgamesh’s line of sight, he asked, “Are we not brothers, Gilgamesh? And isn’t a brother, even if he is a lowly brother-in-law, worthier of your contract than a fool hardy mage who can’t even keep you properly entertained?”

 

Gilgamesh slowly clapped, a smile growing on his lips, “Well done, very well done, mongrel. Such a refined politician you are, even at a time like this. Truly, you are more entertaining than Tokiomi, and your words have some merit to them, for all their presumption. By the grace and will of my wife, I believe you shall live, brother.”

 

“You’re too kind,” the man drawled, causing Gilgamesh’s grin to grow that much sharper, but none the less, none the less…

 

The Gate of Babylon closed behind Gilgamesh, and he watched, as, on silent footsteps, as Rider’s thunderous chariot wreaked havoc upon the wards, the man opened the door to Tokiomi’s study.

 

There was a single, expertly annunciated, phrase, a sickly flash of green and then a feeling of immense loss. Lenin, eyes burning with distaste, loathing, hatred, and resignation turned towards Gilgamesh and held out his pale, uncalloused, hand that had clearly never held a sword but only ever his mage’s stick.

 

With a shark like grin, Gilgamesh took it in his own.


	7. Chapter 7

Kirei sat in the church pews, as he had many, many, times throughout his life. Only now, now the church was empty, and whatever holiness encompassed by this place had been tarnished and trampled underfoot by mages and priests alike.

 

Just in front of him, just before the altar, his father lay dead on the floor.

 

Dead, just like that, out of Kirei’s sight and mind, so that Kirei would just… walk in on him, lying there in his own blood, a final desperate plea written to Kirei in his own blood so that Kirei might inherit the command seals from him.

 

And Tokiomi Tosaka, just the same, bloodless, eyes rolled back, slumped over his desk with a pen still clutched by the fingers of his right hand. Gone away, out of sight and out of mind, without any thought for Kirei walking like a ghost in these haunted places.

 

And as he had looked down at his father, lying there, lifeless, he’d felt something bitter clawing its way up his throat, a distant repressed anger and disappointment that he could not explain even to himself. Though even as he thought this, he felt Gilgamesh’s eyes, those red devil’s eyes, upon him.

 

As he sat here now, still looking at the body of his father, having yet to even wipe the blood from the floor and incinerate his father’s corpse, he considered the war thus far. Caster and his master had both perished, Rider effectively perished, Lancer’s master crippled and likely soon to be dealt with by Emiya if he had not been already, Archer either perished or else perhaps contracted to the only master without a servant, Rider’s master…

 

Kirei himself and Assassin, Emiya and Saber, the English mage Voldemort and Archer, and Matou and Berserker, the numbers were dwindling now, the war was beginning to draw into the endgame.

 

His father and Tokiomi were dead.

 

Kirei now had dozens of command seals winding up both of his arms, inherited from his father, courtesy of whatever panicking mage had sought to defy the church of all things (Archibald or else Matou, but that sort of clever desperation was beyond Matou, so perhaps just Archibald as a suspect then).

 

His father and Tokiomi were dead.

 

What, he thought to himself as he stared with dead indifferent eyes upon the alter, up to the stained-glass windows depicting the saints, was he going to do now?

 

As he stared up at the saints he imagined that Saint Sebastian, tied to his wooden stake with arrows protruding from his chest, looked down upon him with Gilgamesh’s cruel eyes, and silently, in the voice of the king of heroes, they said to him, “This, Kirei, is your chance. Now you are your own master, a man free from any form of father prescribed to him, this is when you discover who you truly are and what joy means to you.”

The seals on his arms itched…

 

“You’re not going to clean him up?”

 

He looked over to his right and found himself staring at Assassin, who was now seated next to him on the bench, dressed in her typical uniform and staring with a dull and almost inhuman emptiness down at his father’s body.

 

“Yes,” he responded.

 

She said nothing to this for a moment, perhaps thinking to herself that Kirei had left him here, upon the floor, for far too long already, as he had stared at Tokiomi’s corpse for far too long inside of that office.

 

Indeed, some instinct in him had preserved the body, kept it there slumped in his chair and from further decay, perhaps with the thought that little Rin might walk in on him…

 

“Are you disappointed, that you didn’t kill him instead?”

 

She was looking at him though, with condemnation and disdain, as if she was already perfectly aware of his answer. As if she already knew as she had always known, when even Kirei himself had not known or forced himself to forget…

 

All at once, he remembered that she’d quoted scripture, and brought her hand against his cheek as a small reminder of the fury and righteous vengeance of God.

 

For now, though, she accepted his silence, just continued to stare at him, her eyes drifting to his arms, then back to his face. Finally, she said, “Tokiomi Tosaka’s dead, I’m sure you knew already, I only just looked myself after having woken up from a much-needed nap. At any rate, Gilgamesh has finally jumped ship. Unsurprising, given everything, but still… It’s just you and me now.”

 

“Yes,” he said, clasping his hands together in front of him, knowing her unstated question, what were they going to do about it, these two who had never claimed to want the grail for themselves.

 

“What will happen to his daughter?”

 

“Rin?” Kirei asked, ah yes, the girl, well, “I’m not sure, her mother is still alive, though Tokiomi once asked me to train her should…”

 

“I’ll take Rin Tosaka off your hands,” Assassin interjected, “You don’t have to worry about what you’re going to do with a little girl.”

 

But that was not what either of them had been thinking, no, she had seen something in him, perhaps that same thing Gilgamesh had seen, and had sought to take Rin Tosaka out of his reach before he could even discern what it was they saw within him.

 

Neither of them were worried about what Kirei Kotomine was going to do with the little Tosaka mage for his own sake.

 

“Aren’t you going to ask what I’m going to do, servant?”

 

“I thought you didn’t want the grail,” Assassin hedged carefully, finally displaying traits to her namesake, avoiding and edging around the topic at hand as she assessed the terrain they were now in.

 

“The grail saw fit for me to be a master, there must be some reason for it,” Kirei responded before lifting his sealed hands to stare at the dark purple marks against his skin, “And with advantages like these at my disposal, without my even lifting a finger, perhaps it’s fate.”

 

“And perhaps, perhaps, Assassin, I’ve been waiting for this moment for a long time. Outwaiting my father and any man who thinks of himself as my father, until I could finally remember what it means to be Kirei Kotomine,” yes, how long had it been, how long had it been since he’d had any true taste of happiness. Oh, years now, perhaps his entire existence he had acknowledged and repressed, for everything that was sinful had seemed so joyous to him.

 

The righteous world had been a bleak and cruel place that had offered him nothing.

 

“What it means to be Kirei Kotomine,” Assassin repeated, eyes narrowing as she looked at him, frowning, eyes then darting to his arms, “Whatever that means, I just hope Kirei Kotomine remembers what I told him earlier. It didn’t just apply to Tosaka.”

 

“No,” he said, his lips curling, “I imagine it didn’t.”

 

That seemed to be enough for her, for the moment, she tilted her head back and placed her arms behind her head, so that she could stare up at the stained-glass windows, and he wondered if she saw Gilgamesh’s eyes in theirs as well…

 

“Are you disappointed, Assassin, that you didn’t kill Tokiomi Tosaka yourself?” he asked, and she turned her head to look at him, a single red eyebrow raising.

 

“Not particularly,” she said, “Sometimes, Kotomine, the world doesn’t offer you divine vengeance, sometimes, your enemies, who are really just fools if they’re anything at all, just… die.”

 

Finally, with a small, thin, and rather resigned smile, she said, “I prescribe to the philosophy of the absurd, I don’t think life has to have a point, Kirei Kotomine.”

 

She sighed then, lifted herself up so that she was sitting fully upright again, “With that in mind, that there doesn’t have to be poetic justice or any clean ending, just what do you think this holy grail is?”

 

“Do you not believe it’s an omnipotent wish granting device?” Kirei asked.

 

“I’m dubious,” Assassin replied, not phased in the slightest.

 

“Tokiomi always believed that it was a path to the root,” Kirei stated, “And other mages a source of great power and at the very least an omnipotent wish granting device.”

 

“Do you want to hear my theory?” Assassin asked, and as he looked at her, at the sunlight now streaming down into her red hair, there was an almost biblical nature to the way she looked, as she was cast into divine light and the mortal Kirei Kotomine into shadow.

 

“If it really does have a semblance of omnipotence, and a semblance of wish granting or the desire to grant wishes, then it’s starting to sound a bit like God. However, I’m starting to believe it’s the demiurge instead.”

 

“The demiurge?”

 

“You must have some familiarity with Gnosticism, being a priest,” Assassin stated, “The demiurge is the closest thing to God we mortals have, an imperfect creator who formed our world and everything we know, where maybe or maybe not a more perfect creator exists outside of him. Something which has the semblance of omnipotence, except not quite.”

 

Then, taking in the sight of his sealed arms again, she said, “Enough power, certainly, to destroy everything it touches with glee.”

 

Silence pervaded the empty church, the saints staring down upon this odd pair, until finally the girl concluded, “Don’t go looking for it, Kotomine, it’d likely be bad for all of us.”

 

“And this is your theory?”

 

She shrugged then, “It’s as good of a theory as yours or anyone else’s.”

 

He mulled over this thought, but then, then caught sight of the seals on his hands and his dead father still lying across from him. Perhaps, perhaps this was to be his only true chance, an opportunity he didn’t dare to waste when it had been so cleanly and easily presented to him.

 

And Gilgamesh through the saints looked down upon him in anticipation.

 

So instead, as he stared at the girl, at her eyes widening in comprehension as she realized what was passing through his mind, he said, “I believe, Assassin, that is time you and I called upon Kariya Matou.”

 

* * *

 

 

Upon a whiteboard, conjured by Iskander’s former master and current brother in arms inside of the too familiar hotel room, Lenin was attempting to write out in black dry erase marker their plan for the coming battle. Listing out the remaining masters and servants, the likely actions they were going to take and the order in which they would attack, and how best to make their move towards disposing of Kirei Kotomine and any other master who might try to gain Lily as a servant.

 

Of course, sitting on the couch next to Archer (which, what a surprise that had been, truly Lenin did not appear to take personal slights personally at all, a trait which Iskander was not sure he could admire), Iskander was struck by the thought that, however older Lenin claimed he was than Iskander, he truly had not seen many battles.

 

Political squabbles, undoubtedly, and apparently decades worth of civil war, but this and his own temporary demise had made him an overcautious puppet master, one who liked to survey and account for every variable on the field.

 

And while this very trait had apparently gained him the haughty, proud, and over powerful king of heroes as a servant, and perhaps would be quite invaluable in a situation where one must prove his worth of kingship in the face of men who would spit in his face, it was not going to win him his grail war.

 

Apparently, Archer agreed, “Mongrel, you are beginning to bore me, surely you do not think we care about such trivial details of your opponents.”

 

Archer, he looked at once perfectly at ease and perfectly tense, a rather strange and contradictory sight but a true one none the less. He lounged upon the couch as he probably had his gilded throne eons ago, but his eyes, those sharp red eyes never left Lenin’s thin shoulders, and even dressed in modern mortal garb the king of heroes had the anticipatory look of battle fever in him.

 

Whenever Lenin turned his back, the way the king of heroes looked at him, Iskander was surprised the servant hadn’t thrown a sword into his back. Not that Iskander would have sat idly by in such a case, strange, dishonorable, and violent of a man Lenin was, he was a worthy friend, but all the same Archer just simply sat, and glared, like a jungle cat lying in wait.

 

“You should,” Lenin responded rather stiffly, “With his daughter’s future on the line and my own word, Kiritsugu Emiya won’t move against us until he’s eliminated Kotomine, which he won’t do until the end because of the grail. However, this leaves the other two, and while by himself Kariya Matou is laughable his servant is not quite so easily disposed of. This, naturally, isn’t even getting to Kotomine.”

 

“My friend,” Iskander said slowly, gritting his teeth as he did so as he shared a glance with Archer, “I hate to say this, but I agree with Archer. Your ability to create games of strategy out of your peers is perhaps admirable, but overdone in this situation, better to strike while the iron is hot than to sit here and plan out Kirei Kotomine’s wedding.”

 

For all their parallels to the Iliad, a band set out to war, rescuing a fair maiden that all would fight over should the know her worth, Lenin was not so much Odysseus as a man who, under more favorable circumstances, might have become Odysseus had his love of his own wit not been left so untethered.

 

As it was, Iskander imagined this man had too often been unchallenged.

 

Somehow, Lenin and Archer both seemed to draw serious offense from this, and Iskander was struck by the thought that they shared more in common than they probably would have liked, pride and stubbornness both had in spades.

 

Archer, strangely enough (for his ego was a thing that normally knew no mortal bounds), got over his offense more quickly and took the opportunity to leer over at Lenin, “Are you sure, brother, that you are simply not taking means to delay my reunion with my wife?”

 

Had Iskander been drinking wine, at that moment, he had no doubt he would have spewed it all over the small coffee table in front of him. Iskander’s eyes moved from Lenin to Archer and back again, the air surrounding Lenin almost seemed to shimmer beneath the force of his constrained anger, the furniture began to tremble slightly.

 

But then, a stiff, and altogether too polite smile, “No, your majesty, I wouldn’t dream of it.”

 

Then, still smiling even as the furniture ceased its vibrations, he said, “That said, Kotomine is a mystery to me, and you, brother, have spent the most time with him out of all of us. Why don’t you tell us how best to eliminate him? Since you’re such an… expert.”

 

“Lenin, you’re just going to let that go?” Iskander asked in disbelief, “There’s no shame in confronting an insult to your honor…”

 

“What insult?” Lenin quickly interjected, only to be interrupted in turn by the king of heroes, who had now turned his attention to Iskander.

 

“Yes, Rider, what insult exactly?” he asked, and then, eyes narrowed and a displeased frown across his pale lips, “In fact, it is you who offers me insult, mongrel, as you have yet to congratulate me upon my marriage.”

 

“To Assassin?” Rider asked, before wryly stating, “I believe I missed my invitation.”

 

“You insult me twice now, mongrel, in your belief that someone like you would be invited to my glorious wedding,” and truly, the man did look insulted by this, as if the mere presumption on Iskander’s part was a stain upon his pride as a king.

 

“Forgive me, brother, but didn’t your glorious wedding take place in a karaoke bar?” Lenin asked, and one could hear a pin drop.

 

If looks alone could wage battle and sack cities…

 

Iskander suddenly wished that he had a drink.

 

“Yes, well, congratulations, Goldie. Forgive my… skepticism,” Iskander finally said, when it seemed clear that neither was about to draw their sword, “Lenin, my friend, you may have the advantage of time and personality over Goldie here, but if you do not stand up for yourself and your woman, for that matter, you will lose her entirely.”

 

Lenin, standing there, seemed to be entirely beyond mortification as he stared forward with the look of those battle-hardened soldiers who had seen too much blood in one night.

 

“And surely, surely Lenin, you don’t wish to lose her to that,” Iskander said, motioning to the king of heroes with one hand.

 

“Were you not so beneath me, Rider, I would cut you to the bone and feed the meat of your flesh to the vermin.”

 

Oh yes, Iskander had no doubt of that, in fact he was slightly surprised that the man hadn’t tried already. For whatever reason, it appeared the king of heroes honestly wanted to see Lenin succeed in that venture, and for that reason better Iskander alive than dead.

 

Or perhaps, as he so eloquently put it, he found the idea of battling Iskander to be beneath him.

 

Finally, after a too long silence, Lenin said, “And I don’t particularly care…”

 

“You don’t care?” Isaknder asked, “Boy, don’t let your pride get the best of you, you clearly care…”

 

“Clearly, you’ve never met Lily,” he said slowly with a sigh, raking a hand through his dark hair, “If you think, that anyone can make her do anything that she doesn’t want to do. My opinion, your opinion, my dear brother’s opinion, they’re entirely irrelevant. Lily will do exactly what she wants, nothing more, nothing less. Now, Archer, Kotomine, please!”

 

For a moment Archer appeared to debate responding to this, but seemed mollified enough, and said, “Kirei Kotomine is an interesting breed of mongrel, a far more entertaining sort than his master, Tokiomi, ever gave him credit for.”

 

Archer mused, “I suppose I would say that he’s on a journey of self-discovery and that the grail is his means to discovering his own inner nature; should he choose to confront it.”

 

“And that inner nature is?”

 

You could see Archer’s eyes light up, as if he took great joy in imparting these secrets of Kirei Kotomine, “He seeks his joy, having long ago smothered it, and has forgotten that it is the suffering of others, catharsis, which brings him happiness.”

 

“He gains happiness at the suffering of others?” Iskander repeated, but apparently his need for clarification was worth neither man’s time. However, it was certainly worth Iskander’s, from what he had seen of Assassin and what Lenin had conveyed to him… This was not the kind of power you wanted bestowed in a man whose very morality was twisted.

 

“Yes, though he had not yet admitted it, even to himself,” Archer said, “I wonder if he has now, I wonder if he looked down at Tokiomi Tosaka’s body in disappointment.”

 

Needless to say, by the smug look on Archer’s face, he thought that he had.

 

“Well then, it seems you were right, time is of the essence,” Lenin said, erasing the words upon the board with a wave of his wand, “If he finishes that journey of self-discovery, he may very well kill us all.”

 

“Archer, go and see if you can make contact with Lily, without tipping off Kotomine, and find out the situation on their end. And, Archer, try to keep your pants on this time,” Lenin dismissed with a rather flat glare towards Archer, who returned it, before disappearing in a shower of light.

 

Once he was gone Iskander cast a glance towards Lenin and remarked, “I’m surprised you’re still standing after that.”

 

“We have an agreement,” Lenin said, “For now, and perhaps for a while yet, he’ll graciously let me keep my head attached to my neck.”

 

“And what are we doing, while he’s away?”

 

“Seeing what Emiya is up to, and whether he’s managed to deal with Matou yet,” Lenin scoffed, already making his way out the door leaving Iskander to stand there and stare after him.

 

“You know, Lenin, you should think more carefully about what I said,” Iskander said, “If you love her, then you have to tell her, or you might as well just hand her off to Goldie on a silver platter.”

 

For a moment Lenin looked back over his shoulder, with such a dull and unamused expression, and then finally, he said, “Alexander, I don’t need your advice.”

 

And then he was out the door, not even giving Iskander the chance to say that yes, he really did need Iskander’s advice.

 

* * *

 

Atop the balcony of the church, standing with Kirei Kotomine, and watching with a pit growing in her stomach the madness of Kariya Matou unfold, she thought there was something almost Thespian to it.  As he, limping malformed wizard on the brink of death for a wish he had no hope of achieving, with hope granted to him so kindly by Kirei Kotomine in a promised duel with Tosaka and two command seals for distracting Emiya, stumbled upon Tokiomi Tosaka’s corpse, Tosaka’s wife and Matou’s childhood friend opening the church doors to see Matou leaning over her dead husband, and then as he strangled her with a strength his crippled hands couldn’t possibly know, there was the madness and despair of Othello or King Leer in his eyes.

 

As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods. They kill us for their sport.

 

And even now, with a great inhuman cry of despair as he looked down and forced himself to see her lying there on the ground, he limped and stumbled out of the church, probably on the verge of crawling…

 

This was a man who had no future, whose very existence was suffering, even if he himself could not dare to believe in it. And that very fact seemed to leave Kirei Kotomine with an almost sacrilegious satisfaction, as he smiled down upon Kariya Matou, as if he were a benevolent god.

 

“It seems, Assassin, that Archer was right,” Kirei murmured beside her ear, “I have found my joy.”

 

And Lily, without a glance at Kotomine, vaulted over the balcony and out the doors onto the street where there he was, slumped against the steel of the next building, blood trailing down his lips and puddled at his face, wheezing even as he stood there.

 

In the pool of blood there were countless maggots.

 

He didn’t even seem to see her as Lily silently unsheathed the sword from her back.

 

Then, moving closer, one step at a time, she offered him the words that Shakespeare, perhaps, might have in her place, “The weight of this sad time we must obey, speak what we feel, not what we ought to say… For what it’s worth, Kariya Matou, I am sorry.”

 

Before he had the chance to breathe she ran him through with the sword of Gryffindor, pitching forward onto the blade, he vomited blood, some congealed and black, almost all of it wriggling and squirming unnaturally, filled with worms, maggots, and roaches.

 

Silently, when his one clear eye began to fade, matching the blind one on the already slackened side of his face, Lily stepped backwards and let him slump to the ground, the maggots already wriggling towards him to devour his flesh.

 

She turned, and there, standing in the doorway, shrouded in light and looking down at her and Matou with a strange look in his eyes, Kirei raised one of his hands, looked down at the seals, and then looking at her said, “Resurrect him.”

 

And with a flash, Lily watched as one of the seals vanished, felt that overbearing weight pressing down on her, reality having her in a chokehold, and the thing that must be the grail itself moving her hand and dragging Kariya Matou’s soul kicking and screaming back into his ruined body.

 

And there he was, curled on the ground, choking on worms and blood even as he vomited these things onto Lily’s shoes, and he turned at looked at her with such fear and desperation, hand shaking a she reached up towards her…

 

“Kill him.”

 

And like the mighty hammer of Thor she brought the sword of Gryffindor down once again through his chest, watching as he convulsed in death throes until he was finally still once again.

 

She could almost hear the smile in Kirei’s voice as he said what she knew he was going to say, “Resurrect him again, Assassin.”

 

And as her shoes began to be soaked with the warm congealed combination of bile, blood, and insects, as they went through this dance again, and, again, Lily thought she might see what her circle of hell would contain.

 

How he laughed, in between every sealed command, as Kariya Matou went back and forth between life and death, worms eating him from the inside and out, and his eyes filled with mad despair as they looked up and accused her even as her steel blade came crashing down on him like the tides.

 

Finally, after she ran her sword through Kariya Matou for what felt like the tenth time, through pure will and defiance of the grail (which seemed to shift against her as if it knew exactly what she was doing and disapproved), she tore Kirei Kotomine’s voice from his throat. Then, turning, without even blinking, she watched as Kirei Kotomine’s sealed arms were ripped from his body.

 

Silently, he cried out, falling to his knees, screaming that name, “Assassin!”

 

“Didn’t I tell you, Kirei?” Lily asked slowly, feeling every inch of her blood-stained clothing and the weight of the sword in her hand, “And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers.”

 

His lips moved along with hers, so that he silently echoed her next sentence, “And you will know my name is the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon thee.”

 

He gave out another silent cry, shaking, his pace failing rapidly as he began to bleed out.

 

“Oh, Kotomine, it’s just a flesh wound,” Lily responded blankly even as she sheathed the sword of Gryffindor. Then, staring at him, collapsed on the front door of his church, only a few feet from where his father had died, and where Tokiomi Tosaka’s body and that of his wife still lingered, the light of the church falling on him, Lily leaned over him with a benevolent smile, reaching out to cradle his face with one blood stained hand.

 

“Remember, Kirei, there’s no true meaning to life. Good men, bad men, righteous men, evil men, they all end up where you’re going eventually and none of them are guaranteed any semblance of meaning from their lives. I hope, on the other side, that you find whatever it is you’re looking for.”

 

Then, leaving the blood of Kariya Matou on his cheek, watching the light fade from his eyes, Lily stood, and slowly, walked back out into the street, letting Kirei Kotomine bleed to death, unacknowledged among a sea of corpses, behind her.

 

About halfway down the street a familiar shower of golden motes of light appeared, she stopped, and waited as Gilgamesh in golden armor appeared, flawless and unmarred by battle as always, and then he blinked and blanched at the sight of her in her Hogwarts Uniform, likely now ruined beyond redemption.

 

“Kariya Matou,” Lily offered grimly in explanation, “And Kirei Kotomine.”

 

“Yes, but whose…” Gilgamesh started only for Lily to cut him off.

 

“Both,” Lily offered, and truly, looking down at her hands now, it was hard to tell which blood had belonged to Matou and which to Kotomine. Then, with a grim smile, she added, “I did predict thunderstorms of blood, didn’t I?”

 

“Ah,” Gilgamesh started, then frowned, then started again, “I see.”

 

“Yes,” Lily said for him, “It wasn’t much fun.”

 

Then, sparing him a softer smile, she turned back to the street and began walking, and of course, he immediately fell in step beside her.

 

“Lily, where are you going?”

 

“It seems,” Lily started, wiping her hands against the front of her uniform, “That I have no choice but to at least attempt to destroy the grail. Sorry, I know it’s yours and that you had plans or something for it but… Well, it needs to go.”

 

“As Kirei Kotomine needed to go?” Gilgamesh repeated, a strange almost regretful look crossing his face, “A pity, he was an interesting mongrel.”

 

“Your interest spurred him to his untimely death,” Lily responded flatly, before relenting with a sigh as she looked at his almost stricken face, “But I suppose that’s in your nature, mine too, for that matter.”

 

“Lily I,” he stopped, then started again, seeming strangely unconfident and desperate as he looked down at her, “I did not think he would be fool enough to direct his attentions upon you.”

 

“The world is filled with fools,” Lily responded, shuddering to a halt when Gilgamesh’s gold gauntlet fell on her shoulder.

 

For a moment, he looked at her and he looked so similar to Kariya Matou, silent desperation in every pore of his body, then, speaking so slowly and with such reluctant pain on his face you’d think Lily was pulling out his teeth one by one, he said, “I am sorry, Lily.”

 

She wondered, staring up at him, if he’d ever said that to anyone before.

 

He looked at once nothing like himself and everything like himself, like everything that was Gilgamesh had been rearranged overnight so that even he wasn’t sure what he was anymore, but all the same Lily couldn’t help but smile back at him and think that, even with everything he was, with all their strange similarities and differences, she was more than willing to count him as her friend.

 

“This is what I do, Gilgamesh,” Lily said, motioning around them, “I clean up other people’s messes, their bloody often murderous messes, and I destroy holy grails, even though I know there’s no real reward in it. If I’m a heroic spirit, then I guess I’m the absurdly heroic spirit, and I only become more absurdly heroic the more I deny it. You don’t have to be sorry.”

 

Then, feeling surer of herself and in better humor despite the drying clotting blood and her still wet shoes, she added, “Besides, it was probably all going to happen anyways. I mean, I really should have expected it, I am Assassin, every year I end up killing somebody. And besides, even if you did have something to be sorry about, well, do you know how little anyone ever apologizes to me? Saying sorry alone, well, it’s worth more than something…”

 

“You care nothing for your own unhappiness then?” Gilgamesh asked, and then, with a small smile of his own, “Strange, you sound almost like the king of knights.”

 

“Oh, I hadn’t thought about that,” Lily said, before frowning, then shrugging, “Well, in recognizing the pointlessness of the universe, Gilgamesh, I have to be happy with the pointlessness in and of itself. Somehow, I don’t think King Arthur would agree with that.”

 

Then, with one last smile, she said, “Kotomine set up a theater downtown where he thought the grail should manifest, I’ll be sending up a signal there shortly, go grab Lenin and Alexander and you can meet me when this is over.”

 

“You think I mean to leave?” Gilgamesh asked.

 

“Well, I’m covered in blood and maggots,” Lily said as she looked down at herself then back up, Gilgamesh’s gaze following her and shuddering at the sight of mongrel blood all over her, which, was actually kind of warranted, “I don’t really think I’m up for company at the moment. Besides, there’s still a grail war on.”

 

“I find that I can’t quite bring myself to care,” and his smile was… different, or rather, it was like it had been in that karaoke bar, in a secluded room with Tom Jones playing in the background. Had that really only been a few nights ago?’

 

“Even about the maggots?”

 

“Yes, well, the maggots are disgusting,” Gilgamesh sneered before asking, “Why exactly are you covered in insects?”

 

“Well, Kariya Matou suffered consumption of the worm variety…” seeing Gilgamesh’s look of incomprehension she clarified, “He was vomiting blood and maggots.”

 

Gilgamesh looked suitably horrified by this small fact of Lily’s life. However, he seemed to pull himself past this as he looked down at her again, and said, “Regardless, even with the maggots, I… I have wanted to speak with you.”

 

“Actually, I have too,” Lily said, “You’re working for Lenin now, aren’t you?”

 

Gilgamesh did not looked pleased by her bringing this up, glowing more fiercely as his eyebrows lowered, “Yes, I now am servant to your mongrel, though he is more entertaining than Tokiomi, I give him that.”

 

“I actually wanted to thank you,” Lily said, talking right over Gilgamesh’s flabbergasted expression, “You can keep an eye on him now for me, especially at a time like this, it means a lot to me.”

 

“Yes, well, he and I are brothers now,” Gilgamesh whispered, as if only just realizing these words for himself, whatever they meant.

 

“Take care of him, Gilgamesh,” Lily said one last time, “And I’ll see you on the other side of the war.”

 

And with that, Lily left him with little other choice, as she teleported back to the theater where Irisviel von Einzburn’s limp body lay in the center of the stage, the shadow of the holy grail hanging overhead.

 

* * *

 

True to her word, as he found she had the strangest tendency to be, within a few hours there was a flare from across the river. It lit up the night sky, this strange lone, red flame flickering then falling to the earth and as Gilgamesh watched it fall he was not quite certain what he felt.

 

When he closed his eyes he saw her, blood stained and battle weary, smiling back at him with the strangest warmth in her green eyes.

 

And as he’d looked at her, he’d thought that he did not understand her at all, yet even just looking at her caused something in his chest to loosen and tighten at the same time.

 

Rider and Gilgamesh’s current master, Lily’s mongrel and his brother by marriage, rode on ahead towards the theater while Gilgamesh, in golden light and battle armor, shaken yet steady, appeared in an underground parking garage before a battle worn Saber.

 

She stood there, blood streaked across her face, hair coming loose, eyes wide and unseeing, her noble sword gripped far too tightly in her hand. And for a moment, beside her as a hazy apparition, he saw Lily standing beside her with her own silver sword in hand.

 

For a second, they were twins, devastation in their every movement, but then, then Lily lifted her head skyward and offered a resigned and bitterly nostalgic smile to the stars, blocked out as they were by Fuyuki’s lights. Saber though, turned her head, and with the deepest betrayal met Gilgamesh’s eyes.

 

“Archer, I suppose I should have expected you,” Saber said as she took in his presence.

 

There were so many things he could say to that, she looked beautiful, standing there in utter devastation, there was a great beauty that came with catharsis that few dared to recognize. Kirei Kotomine had been one of them, of course, now he was dead by Lily’s vengeful hand.

 

If Gilgamesh was here by his own means, or even for the grail, perhaps he might laugh at her anguish and twist the knife in the wound. But somewhere upstairs, Lily was lying in wait, for the end of the war and the end of the grail…

 

And there had been such an alarming ease at which she had expected her blood-soaked destiny, embracing fate as if it were a familiar friend, or a well-worn article of clothing to be draped without ceremony across her shoulders…

 

“Anything that concerns the grail, concerns me, king of knights,” he said instead and then, eyeing her cloaked sword, he asked, “Do you mean to die with no fight left in you?”

 

“No,” she said, then stepped forward, raising her sword aloft, “No, I will not stand here and end like this, not by your hand, of all people…”

 

With both her hands now whole she moved against him, swift even in her armor, leaving him little time to open the Gate of Babylon and block her attack.

 

“Are you not going to say it?” she asked at one point when he had forced her back, on the defensive, “That you were right, that I am a failure of a king, just a little girl who didn’t understand anyone or anything?! Well, king of heroes?”

 

“I did not feel the pressing need to repeat myself,” Gilgamesh said with a sigh, “Though if you insist on demanding that from me, then repeat myself I shall, you are no king, Saber.”

 

She gave out a harsh laugh, and then, with quiet desperation, “I know, I finally know…”

 

“It is hardly your fault,” Gilgamesh stated neutrally, seeing Lily so easily in Saber’s stead, and the life that Lily must have lived in the modern version of Saber’s homeland, “They thrust a false ideal of kingship upon your shoulders, it is an odd soul who would turn away such pretty dreams for a less appealing reality.”

 

And how had Lily turned away from Saber’s path? It struck him then, as they battled, that he had no idea, that in knowing the bare bones of her legend he truly knew none of it at all.

 

“I am not in the mood for your games, Archer!” Saber cried out, rushing towards him, and even in her rage her mastery of the sword was more than clear, but he himself was quite skilled and combat by swords, and even one of his lesser treasures easily blocked the weight of her blade.

 

Strangely, as he met each of her strikes against him, he wasn’t in the mood for his own games either. This night had wearied him, in more ways that he had expected, and he wasn’t entirely sure why. He was sure, when he reflected on this moment, he’d find Saber’s pain rather striking, but for the moment it just seemed to weigh him down further.

 

There was little enjoyment in this.

 

Instead it seemed a parody of a true battle, himself teetering on the edge apathy and perhaps even pity, and this woman on the edge of madness. Together they danced, striking at each other, too well matched, and on another occasion, he might pull out Ea itself and wipe this beautifully noble and presumptuous girl from the face of the earth. No, no, he would have taken his time, brought out Ea to match the light of her Excalibur, but he would have cried out and twisted that knife a little more…

 

“There is something terrible in kingship,” Gilgamesh finally said as she glared at him, their blades in deadlock, “That is the truth of the matter.”

 

All at once, she stopped, her blade faltering and his own cutting into her skin, before he could draw back though she began to fade, her eyes widening as she looked upwards, they both looked upwards…

 

“Kiritsugu…” she whispered, but there was no need to finish, because it was clear to both of them that somewhere above them, Kiritsugu Emiya was now dead.

 

And then Saber and her sword were gone, like they had never existed in the first place.

 

And Gilgamesh felt a pale echo of the emptiness that he had felt when Enkidu had last closed his eyes upon this earth, three thousand years ago.


	8. Chapter 8

“When we are born, we cry that we are come to this great stage of fools.”

 

Lily stood, left of centerstage, watching as Kiritsugu Emiya, with pistol and trench coat and command seals on one hand, walked quietly into the theater, eyes slipping from her to his wife’s body that Kirei had so nicely laid out for his viewing pleasure.

 

She looked… Not quite peaceful, no, but rather empty, lying there drained of all color yet dressed in such vibrant red, as if she had known she was a colorless thing and attempted to make up for it in the only way she could.

 

Of course, Kirei Kotomine had snapped her neck and now Irisviel von Einzburn wouldn’t be doing anything.

 

More, the grail, a large dark glowing thing which hardly resembled a grail at all, overshadowed her utterly.

 

“Not my stage, of course,” Lily commented as Kiritsugu’s dull gray eyes lifted to her once again, “All of this, this pitifully overdramatic confrontation we have here, belongs to the late Kirei Kotomine.”

 

The man kept walking forward, his gun held quite professionally in his hand, and Lily kept her eye constantly on him, “Are you familiar with tragedy, Mr. Emiya, of the Shakespeare variety, I mean?”

 

Kiritsugu didn’t answer, but Lily didn’t particularly need him to.

 

“A tragedy, a classic Shakespeare tragedy, typically occurs over a very short period of time, you get a prelude of sorts, a building of tension, but when it goes to hell, it only takes a matter of days to get there. And there’s some tarnished nobility in the protagonist, usually, Romeo and Juliet is one of those weird exceptions, but Hamlet you initially have a prince who takes a noble and perhaps just course of action… Except he goes slowly mad and ends up stabbing his would be father in law through a curtain, among other shenanigans,” Lily waved this thought away even as the man lifted his gun towards her, aiming at her head, “But I’m getting off topic, the point being, well, that we all have our roles to play, and mine is to prevent you from wishing on this giant floating ominous cup over our heads.”

 

He shot, the bullet ricocheted off of her shield, and Lily offered him a grim smile, “If it was that easy, Kiritsugu Emiya, don’t you think someone would have managed it by now?”

 

She examined him, looking at him you’d never guess that world peace was his ultimate goal, he had a certain familiarity with death and violence that typically didn’t come from a pacifist. Of course, that was her taking Kirei Kotomine at his word, but he had been so disappointed, that Lily couldn’t help but think that it was the truth.

 

“Kotomine said you wanted world peace,” Lily finally said, “It’s admirable, in theory, but just wishing on this cup for it… Even if it really was an omnipotent wish granting device, a peace won by that would be cheap at best. As it is though, I don’t think the grail can give you what you really want.”

 

For a moment, he simply stared at her and her back at him, his gun still aimed at her head, and in this silent eye of the storm she offered him his last way out, “Give up, Kiritsugu, and you can walk back out those doors and leave me to destroy the grail.”

 

And even though he didn’t say a word, and all he offered her was a wry shadow of a smile, Lily knew that his answer was a clear and non-negotiable, “No.”

 

Although, to be honest, with the body count being what it was already, the fate of the world on the line, and an omnipotent wish hanging in the air above their heads, Lily couldn’t exactly say she was surprised.

 

She had no doubt hundreds of bodies had paved his path to the holy grail, when you walked on a road like that, you didn’t have the option of turning back around.

 

And he was… fast. Faster than she had expected, than she believed possible, time itself seemed twist and slow within him and sweat ran down his face as he moved, and with a bullet from his gun, shattered through her shield. Lily fell back, erecting another shield around herself and teleporting behind him, but god he was fast.

 

Not quite like he was distorting time itself, but time on a smaller scale, his own time so that Lily could never really keep him in her line of sight, or concentrate enough on him to send any sort of overpowered lethal glitch his way.

 

There he was, right in front of her, breathing too heavily now but with enough presence that… He brought up the gun, no, a different gun, and without hesitation or warning shot a bullet, ripping through her shields, and straight into her forehead.

 

She imagined, in the seconds where she fell, where Lily left this plane of reality entirely to a train station and a man that did not exist in this world, that he looked down at her body for a few critical seconds, and that perhaps there was a deep, smothered, regret in his eyes.

 

As it was, after only offering the bewildered Death a somewhat sad smile and the promise to visit later, he had already stepped over Eleanor Lily Potter’s body and towards that great dark beacon that floated overhead, not even once glancing back at her.

 

Which, of course, was how she managed to gut him with the sword.

 

For a moment, he was perfectly and utterly still, blood dribbling out of his lips and down his chin, eyes empty, and then, staggering, fingers shaking, he pitched forward with his hand reaching out for his wife.

 

And just like that, just like that, Kiritsugu Emiya, Kirei Kotomine’s greatest threat, and a man that Lily would have liked to have known better under less bleak circumstances, was dead.

 

“Oh, what fools these mortals be,” Lily whispered to herself, the stage, and of course, to the holy grail. It glowed ominously above her, dark red light pulsing out of it in short bursts which grew progressively shorter, as if it was reaching some dread climax which Lily didn’t know the name of.

 

All of this, for a wish, a wish that no one had ever seen or heard from but just had the knowledge that it somewhere, somehow, must exist. For a moment, a split second, Kiritsugu Emiya had had some Lenin-like qualities about him, but there was a desperation in him that Lenin never allowed himself.

 

Lenin would never have sacrificed reality itself, even the remote possibility of ending reality, for the sake of any wish, let alone one which would fundamentally alter the human race in such a grotesque manner.

 

“We are our wars just as much as we are our joys,” Lenin might have said, if someone had asked, “And I see no reason to argue with that.”

 

Of course, no one ever had, or would, not with his reputation. Still, as she looked down at Kiritsugu Emiya, moving his hand so that it was inside of his wife’s, perhaps someone should have.

 

From behind her there was a great cry as lightning crashed, oxen bellowed, Alexander the Great apparently made his way into the theater. With a very irate Wizard Lenin in tow, apparently, “Could you make this thing any less obtrusive?”

 

And Rider perfectly oblivious to the source of Wizard Lenin’s irritation, “The Gordius Wheel was built for speed, my friend, not subtlety.”

 

“I realize that, but surely, it doesn’t have to spit out lightning every single time, does it? We’ve just melted the entire back row…”

 

“Well, to be fair, I don’t think this theater is going to have much use after all of this anyway…”

 

From the corner of her eye, at the end of the room, she caught a flash of gold. And Lily found it hard to repress a smile, well, the gang was all here then. Without looking at any of them directly, she lifted a hand forward and breathed out, focusing on the grail, and then with a thought, cleaving it in two.

 

Time seemed to halt, the grail half together and half not, for a moment, it seemed as if she’d shredded reality itself instead, but then, all at once, with a blink, they were back, the grail collapsing in on itself as black hole edged in purple and red light.

 

Then, without warning, it burst outwards in a flood of black ooze, covering Lily completely.

 

* * *

 

One moment she had been standing there, back facing him, standing before the grail with a hand uplifted, and the next she was gone, engulfed by a swiftly moving river of black sludge which seemed to originate from the ceiling itself, a great fire extending from its tar like surface as it swiftly raged through the theater, eating at the foundations and seats and melting to the floor as it eagerly sought the streets of Fuyuki.

 

He himself was perched, moving from seat to melting seat, creeping closer to where Rider and Lenin stood in the Gordius Wheel, floating above the black raging flood with a look of equal dismay upon their faces.

 

However, his eyes, his eyes kept moving desperately to the front of the theater, because she had been standing there until the wave had crashed overhead, and now there was only the river where she had once stood so proudly only a few seconds before.

 

Then, without a word of shock, dismay, or even warning, when only a second must have passed, Gilgamesh watched as Lenin dove head first from Rider’s oxen cart and into the burning river, eyes squeezed shut even as Rider himself called out to him and reached ineffectively for the edge of his tunic.

 

And then he too, without a word, was simply gone.

 

Leaving Rider and Gilgamesh, standing there, in shock and horror trying to process… Enkidu’s death, as quick as it was, had been slow, there had been that illness, that incurable illness, he had not simply disappeared, his body itself vanishing into the night.

 

And what would eternity be now, him standing dumbly in the shadow of her existence, waiting for her to reappear every time he closed his eyes and opened them again?

 

However, the more he stared at the river, standing there on a melting gold and red chair, the more his shock, dismay, and building grief gave way to anger as a single realization stole upon him.

 

“I have been outdone by a mongrel.”

 

That man, that mortal common upstart, had jumped in without a moment of hesitation, while Gilgamesh, king of heroes, in golden armor, was still standing upon this precarious seat cushion, debating his own mortality and a future without his wife.

 

Feeling his dismayed rage grow, he chose, instead of the many curses he knew to summarize this situation, to utter one of Lily’s favored slurs, “That brazen motherfucker!”

 

“Archer?” Rider called out to him, but Gilgamesh did not have time for mongrels, not as he stripped himself of his armor, leaving only his bare and naked skin. This must have alarmed Rider for he called out more desperately, “Archer, surely you don’t mean to…”

 

But whatever Rider thought Gilgamesh meant or meant not to do, an opinion that was not worthy of his status of a mongrel pretender king, Gilgamesh did not hear the rest of it for, without allowing himself another moment of hesitation (and thus another moment of humiliation for hesitating that much longer than Lenin), threw himself into the burning river.

 

Only, it was not burning, it was neither hot nor cold as he sunk into its depths, and while, for a moment, he was pulled swiftly under the tides as he would be a normal flooding river, this quickly ebbed and soon he found himself slowly floating towards the earth, the edge of gravity lightened ever so slightly.

 

And, opening his eyes, he found himself standing in Babylon as it once was, on the balcony of his palace overlooking the high walls, the ziggurats, and the temples… Except, except that the very air was tinted a dusky red and purple, as if the sky had been lit on fire long ago and was now curling into ash, in the street there were no people, and in the sky there were no birds, and in the air there was the overpowering scent of something burning out of sight.

 

“This is your legacy, Gilgamesh, does it displease you?”

 

Gilgamesh turned too slowly, he found himself staring at Enkidu, Enkidu once again, but this was not a drunken haze of Enkidu this was… This was not Enkidu, the form, the face, the curling ragged beard of a beggar, those were all familiar, but it was not Enkidu’s soul which burned from those dark and cruel eyes, and that edge to his smile…

 

As this place was not his Babylon, the land beyond the walled cities not his Uruk, this could not possibly be Enkidu.

 

Enkidu, the thing wearing Enkidu’s face like a clay mask, continued to speak, “Remember, how, when you crawled back to Uruk after that long journey, empty handed and denied immortality, you looked upon the high walls of Babylon, built by wretched mongrel slaves in your own grief and terror, and you wept at the very sight of them? And you thought to yourself, that this, this would be your enduring legacy upon this land, and the greatest thing to which you could possibly have aspired.”

 

Gilgamesh sneered, his face flushed, and the gate of Babylon opening even here in this nether world as he drew forth a sword from it to place it against this cheap imposter’s neck, “Do not disrespect the dead, cur. I do not need to hear such things from a foul creature such as yourself.”

 

Enkidu seemed unconcerned by this, perhaps even a trace amused, instead he asked another question, in the sort of voice that Enkidu had used when he thought he was being slyly humorous (but such subtle humor had always been hopelessly beyond the man, and that, in itself, had been far more hilarious), “Your legacy though, the written word of what you are, lasted far longer than your city, did you know that, Gilgamesh?”

 

Without hesitation, for this man was not and could not be Enkidu, Gilgamesh severed the man’s neck. Then, without a word, he turned from Babylon and Uruk beyond, into the palace itself, and began to search for curling red hair and those jewel like green eyes.

 

“So impatient.”

 

Gilgamesh stopped, for there against a pillar was a copy of himself, a younger version, sneering down upon him, ruby red eyes gleaming, flowers of lilies stripped from their stems and gathered at his sandaled feet.

 

“What’s the rush, mongrel? Only a fool believes he can outrun himself,” the other Gilgamesh said with a sly smile.

 

“Why would you think that?” Gilgamesh asked.

 

“Why would I not? You willingly turn your back on your greatest works, your great treasure horde, all that encompasses Gilgamesh the king of all kings, and divest yourself of your own armor, for a little girl,” the other Gilgamesh sighed, almost in disappointment, “I blame Enkidu, we were never the same when that mongrel arrived and barred our path to the pleasures of the flesh, he brought out the mortal third of our soul, and when he died we twisted even more so. The girl, though, in the course of a few days she has managed more devastation than even that.”

 

Gilgamesh could only grit his teeth and oh, how he felt it, the twisting of that verbal knife that he had always been so very good at. And how it tore at his proverbial flesh, inch by dreaded inch…

 

The other Gilgamesh, the Gilgamesh that once was, motioned towards him, from his head to his toes with a single hand, “Look at you, naked as the day you were born, only your pride keeping you clothed now. Diving into your own damnation for the sake of a girl who you married in a karaoke bar. They’ve almost turned you into a mongrel just like all the rest.”

 

He whispered then, leaning close to Gilgamesh’s ear, “We were untouchable, once, our subjects trembled at the very whisper of our names upon the wind. Gilgamesh, they’d hear, and their daughters and wives would lament, for we were all but a god in mortal flesh.”

 

“If you were truly a king of kings, then you would have taken Ea, and destroyed her where she stood. For the last enemy to be defeated is Death.”

 

And upon those words, Gilgamesh offered his former self, coated in cruelty and gold and jewels, a thin smile, and pushed him to the side.

 

“You still search for her?!” the Gilgamesh that once was, cried out to him, utterly misunderstanding. But of course, he would have misunderstood then, women were temporary pleasurable distractions then, and men were even less than that.

 

Enkidu had interrupted that, had as his former self said, corrupted that Gilgamesh, but only slightly, because even in the beginning he had looked down upon Lily and seen her for a mongrel when she was anything but.

 

“She is the destroyer of us all, Gilgamesh! To suffer her existence is to deny everything you once believed in! For one day, one day she will turn her back on this universe and all who suffer in its indifferent grasp, and you will be no different!”

 

A sword from the gate, the sound of blood splattering against the marble, then silence, “I have had enough of your worthless drivel, specter.”

 

Gilgamesh walked forward through the empty halls of his great palace, numbly past the sculptures and vases, the pelts of exotic animals lining the stonework of the floor, and down the great staircases until he was at the great carved doors to the steps of the palace.

 

And as he walked the building seemed to melt away under his indifference, Babylon melting beneath him in his memory, leaving nothing but thin transparent walls built of his own nostalgia until only the great gates into Babylon itself remained golden and gleaming in this twilight world.

 

However, as he put his hand upon them, a third, unfamiliar, specter appeared. This one took the form of a mortal boy, strangely beautiful with dark lashes and pale white hair almost made from starlight, his eyes black pits which almost appeared to lack irises, and, dressed in a male counterpart to Lily’s own battle school girl garb, the boy offered him a thin, polite, and utterly empty smile.

 

“And who, exactly, are you supposed to be, mongrel?” Gilgamesh asked, this time impatience and exasperation leaking through him.

 

The boy’s expression did not change in the slightest and he did not even blink, finally, after too long of a pause, he responded, “I am not.”

 

That had to be the least satisfying answer that any mongrel had ever bestowed upon him.

 

At the sight of Gilgamesh’s patently unamused expression, the boy, unhelpfully, clarified, “I am everything that is not Lily.”

 

Well, at least this one was slightly more useful, “You know Lily then, boy?”

 

It just kept smiling, worse somehow than even the visions of himself and Enkidu, which at least had been a parody of everything human and not human, whereas this boy seemed to be nothing at all which had somehow taken the shape of a boy.

 

A boy who was anything but a boy.

 

“We were one, once,” the boy said, and was it just Gilgamesh, or was there a touch of some almost human emotion in his eyes, but it was gone swiftly enough, “Now, however, we are quite different. All beings know Lily, some just don’t realize it.”

 

“Have you seen her pass through here?” Gilgamesh, and then, eyes narrowed, “And quickly, boy, my patience has been severely tried already by mongrels and visions alike.”

 

“Of course, it’s her grail, after all,” the boy said before leaning closer, peering into Gilgamesh’s eyes without the slightest hint of fear upon his face, “You were wrong, you humans often are I find, even you one third humans. The grail was never yours, just as this world you claim to rule was never yours, it has always been hers.”

 

“You think I care for the opinion of some abomination that cannot even manage the charade of a human boy?” Gilgamesh asked, and then, then it grinned at Gilgamesh and barked out a single empty laugh.

 

The boy then motioned to their surroundings, melting and twisting by the minute, unheard voices screaming in agony and clawing at the walls, “This, Gilgamesh of Uruk, is the agony of creation, mankind’s unwavering despair, and all the curses that they have cast upon themselves since the very beginning…”

 

Then, dark eyes burning, he turned to Gilgamesh again, inspecting him, dissecting him piece by piece, “Utnapishtim lied to you, when you met him beyond the waters of death, through the darkened tunnels beneath the twin-peaks of Mashu and past the garden by the sea, he said that he had been granted immortality so that while men would die, humankind would always remain. But the universe itself is finite, the sun will expand, and entropy will someday claim all that is left… And this experiment you so lovingly and loathingly call life, will shudder to a close.”

 

Their surroundings changed, melted into that garden by the sea, after he had crawled through the mountains, and he had felt, upon seeing the sea and the light, that the world was filled with such possibility…

 

Only, as with all things in the waters of the grail, it had taken a hellish cast, so that even while Gilgamesh stood where he had once stood three thousand years ago, everything looked as if it had long since died.

 

And, as Gilgamesh looked out at the landscape before him, the boy whispered with his bell-like unworldly voice into his ear, “For over a thousand years, Roman conquerors returning from the wars enjoyed the honor of a triumph – a tumultuous parade. In the procession came trumpeters and musicians and strange animals from the conquered territories, together with carts laden with treasure and captured armaments. The conqueror rode in a triumphal chariot, the dazed prisoners walking in chains before him. Sometimes his children, robed in white, stood with him in the chariot, or rode the trace horses. A slave stood behind the conqueror, holding a golden crown, and whispering in his ear a warning: that all glory is fleeting.”

 

All glory is fleeting…

 

He closed his eyes, saw Babylon, himself upon its throne, and his legend through the ages…

 

Then, however, he saw Lily in the moonlight, covered in blood and maggots, smiling across at him, and he remembered what she’d told him as he’d stared at her and had tried to comprehend what he was feeling.

 

So, with Lily’s smile now, he looked at whatever this boy that wasn’t a boy at all was, and said, “If it is my lot in life that my tale, and that all tales of the world which are descended from mine, has no meaning… If I am no more than a senseless player in Lily’s play, that the epic of Gilgamesh is simple prelude, then I am more than fine with that.”

 

And as he spoke his own divinity returned to him, his skin glowing even in this darkened place, so that when he placed his palm against the door of the palace it was as if the sun were beating down upon it.

 

And just like that, he pushed through the doorway, and out into the light.

 

* * *

 

Lily stared out at the edge of oblivion inside of the darkened contents of the destroyed grail, except, she knew exactly what she was looking at as she looked over the grail… She had been wrong, the grail wasn’t a false god, but the byproduct of one.

 

And of course, as with all horrible things in the world, without warning Rabbit was standing right there beside her.

 

“Rabbit, what an unpleasant and unsurprising surprise,” Lily said without looking at him, still staring into the void, and then asked, “Luna let you come all the way unsupervised to Fuyuki?”

 

If so, then Luna was officially fired as Rabbit-watcher, even for emergency situations like this one.

 

He offered her his most Rabbity smile, and admitted, in surprisingly eloquent and wordy English, “In some domains, outside of time and mind, where reality slips away, I can travel faster and easier than in yours. The grail, in many ways, belongs to us both.”

 

Then, with an empty, polite, Rabbity grin, he added, “I have more power here.”

 

Lily turned, forced herself to turn from the heart of darkness, so she could glare at him, “Are you sure you didn’t eat it?”

 

“No,” Rabbit said, looking, well not quite because Rabbit never looked anything, but at the very least seeming more amused than neutral, “It’s far too human.”

 

“You know what it is Lily, don’t pretend as if you don’t, it belongs to you.”

 

Despair, anger, hatred, agony… The ill-wishes of all of mankind, their cries of desperation at the futility and agony of life, all condensed into this single dimension in the seemingly benign form of a holy grail.

 

Then leaning forward and brushing a tendril of hair behind her ear, he said, “It is a side effect of sentience and life, that once rocked all that wasn’t, splitting it into fragments of what it once was. It is that which, like entropy, was not solved in the beginning and isn’t solved now. And one day, perhaps thousands of years from this moment, or perhaps in only ten, it will destroy mankind. Just as you yourself have always prophesized, Destroyer of Worlds.”

 

“Go back to Scotland,” Lily commanded, and just looking at him without an ounce of human pity or feeling seemed to be enough, because all he did was offer her a slight bow, and then disappear, like he had never been standing there in the first place.

 

Lily turned her attention back to the edge of existence, looking into the pit of madness, and trying to find some semblance of meaning inside it. She wasn’t sure why, except that, to not try seemed…

 

Had Death once looked out onto the void of space, at the end of all mankind, and had he seen this staring back at him?

 

A hand fell on her shoulder, she looked up, and there was Wizard Lenin looking more than a little worse for wear, “You wouldn’t believe what I just had to walk through to get here.”

 

Lily couldn’t help but smile back, even though she had felt like doing anything but, “Rabbit?”

 

“…Yes, he showed up too,” Wizard Lenin added reluctantly.

 

“Did he tell you?” Lily asked, then, looking back over the edge, “I don’t remember how, or why, but I think I’m responsible for this… For everything that’s…”

 

For a moment, he almost seemed to hesitate, then, with one of his rarer soft smiles that seemed so foreign on his face, he said, “Would you believe that Alexander the Great gave me some, perhaps warranted, advice today? He told me, that I should tell you how I feel… Which is admittedly very difficult but…”

 

He trailed off and pulled her close, and she tried to remember if he’d ever done something like this willingly, all the same she stayed perfectly still as he continued, “Whatever monstrosity of a god you are, I don’t particularly care. I, at least, know who you are, even if they all state that you are become Death, Destroyer of Worlds. I know that you will do everything in your power to save mankind, even when we are long past being worth any sort of effort at all.”

 

And, drawing back and still smiling at her, brushing the stray tears that had gathered at the corners of her eyes, “That, Lily, is more than enough for me, more than enough to follow you into whatever pit of hell you tumble into and drag you back out again.”

 

And there they stood, her hand in his, at the very end of the world.

  

* * *

 

“Hey, it’s Gilgamesh!”

 

Gilgmaesh turned and found Lenin and Lily walking hand in hand, through the labyrinth of twilight towards him, Lily looking overjoyed at the sight of him while his mongrel brother in law looked more than a little irritated.

 

Ah, that Lenin had found her first, perhaps it was a given as Gilgamesh had allowed himself to be so thoroughly distracted, but all the same he had hoped that he would be the one to find her.

 

Gilgamesh, however, on seeing her alive and well enough could not quite bring himself to care. Even in a place like this she glowed, her hair a living fire and her eyes so bright, his memory of her had done her injustice.

 

Even the thought of fleeting glory and empty promises of immortality could not haunt him.

 

“What are you doing here?” Lenin asked, and then, glancing down at his body and back up again, “And without any clothes?”

 

“You would have had me soil my armor with that black hell-water?” Gilgamesh balked.

 

“You could have stayed out of the black hell-water,” the man commented tersely, “No one asked you to jump.”

 

“And been outdone by you, brother?” Gilgamesh sneered, “Hardly.”

 

Lenin seemed displeased by this but let it go, or at least, attempted to, “So, Gilgamesh, what haunting images of your past did you have to walk through to get here?”

 

Gilgamesh, however, was in “Oh, Enkidu, myself, and a strangely attractive boy who I was less familiar with…”

 

“White hair and a polite smile?” Lily interjected.

 

“Yes,” Gilgamesh responded, blinking, but Lily continued right over his answer.

 

“That was Rabbit he’s… A reality devouring abomination who is supposed to be getting babysat by Luna right now but apparently has, ‘more power than usual’, inside the grail dimension.” Lily said, “One must always keep an eye on him, lest he eat Scotland.”

 

“Eat Scotland?” Gilgamesh repeated, not sure he quite understood the concept of devouring a nation-state.

 

“Well, he once ate all the ghosts in the castle, and some girl named Sally-Anne Perkins,” Lily said, “The trouble with Rabbit eating things is, well, when he eats them they stop ever having existed, so it’s hard to see what he has eaten and what he hasn’t.”

 

“At any rate, brother, what did you have to pass through?”

 

“A different rabbit, oddly enough, hanging from the rafters,” Lenin said with a strange smile on his face, “As well as a more youthful version of myself.”

 

“I imagine he was grossly embarrassed and disappointed by you,” Gilgamesh responded, his words seeming to strike a nerve with the man, “You seem like the type to have dreamed of something other than being a mongrel.”

 

“And was your past-self happy to see how you turned out?” Lenin responded, voice as harsh as the crack of a whip.

 

“Of course not, but then, he had yet to meet Enkidu,” Gilgamesh responded, because this in and of itself, provided all the information either of them would need to know.

 

“You’ve changed,” Lenin remarked, a strange look in his eyes as he surveyed Gilgamesh, or rather, the altered Gilgamesh from the one he had been so very familiar with.

 

But then, with a strange smile, one not laced with cruelty of any sort but instead a foreign optimism, he said, “Yes, I do believe I have, of course, only in the ways that truly matter.”

 

* * *

 

They all emerged at once, each grasping onto the other, rising out of the fading black flood waters even as they reached out towards Iskander, who had been watching the water for what had felt like hours.

 

Then, as he pulled them into the Gordius Wheel, each of them gasping and plastered with the strange tar like water, it oozing down their clothes (or in Archer’s case, his pale naked flesh), Assassin said, “I feel… I feel like the end of Ghostbusters.”

 

Then, at seeing everyone’s confusion, she elaborated, “You know, when they kill the giant marshmallow demon sent by the Sumerian god… Not you, Gilgamesh, some other god, Gozer the Gozerian, and I mean Zuul and Vinz Clothro also famously show up, or Zuul more famously but… You know, and they cross the streams and everyone expects the world to explode and they end up covered in marshmallow innards… I feel like that.”

 

“Lily,” Lenin calmly interjected, wiping black ooze away from his face, “Only you feel like that.”

 

Assassin then caught sight of their demolished surroundings, the theater gone and only rubble where it once stood, and beyond that the city of Fuyuki on fire.

 

“The flood… It lit everything in its path,” Iskander commented, and indeed it had, and watching it, there had been nothing he could do to stem it, only wait, sit, and pray for his friends to emerge from the black liquid.

 

“I think you all should know…” Assassin started, before stopping and starting again, “I couldn’t destroy it, only send it into hibernation for a little while… It belongs, it is too intertwined with mankind to completely destroy.”

 

“Well, hopefully next time, that will be some other bastard’s problem,” Lenin remarked, rather blithely for the somber situation at hand, but perhaps not wrongly either. It was more of a hope that next time, this grail war would be someone else’s problem.

 

“Also, before we leave, I promised to go pick up Rin Tosaka, you know, since her entire family was slaughtered,” Assassin quickly said, grinning at the glare sent to her by Iskander’s former master, but he relented with a sigh quickly enough, with a sigh, and his own pained admission, “It’s just as well, I made an unbreakable oath to break into the Einzburn castle and kidnap Kiritsugu Emiya’s daughter, Ilyasviel von Einzburn.”

 

“Well then,” Iskander stated, “I suppose we’d best be off, you coming too, Goldie?”

 

“But of course,” Archer responded, seeming completely unconcerned for the black ooze dripping off him or his own lack of clothing, “I must see my wife’s homeland for myself before I claim kingship over it and if we’re claiming our enemies’ virgin daughters as hostages I can hardly say no to such a venture.”

 

“Hostage is such a strong word,” Assassin said, “I prefer… some other word that makes it sound like we’re not kidnapping them for ransom.”

 

“At least with a ransom we’d get paid,” Lenin mumbled under his breath, “I’m going to be stuck with these brats for at least ten years.”

 

And with that, they were off, leaving the rubble of the city behind them as they rode west, into the early sunset, and towards whichever local schoolhouse Tokiomi Tosaka had left his daughter in.

**Author's Note:**

> Someone prompted a Fate crossover and since I only know and like Fate/Zero here we are. Also, due to that, there are some errors with things in the greater Fate universe so be gentle with those.
> 
> Thanks for reading, comments, kudos, and bookmarks are greatly appreciated.


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